


To Anyone

by ZenyZootSuit



Series: To Anyone [1]
Category: Blue Bloods (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Attempted Suicide, Discussion of Rape, Gen, Incorrect Depiction of Court System, Off-screen Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Recovery, Substance Abuse, The author tried to be canon compliant, Victim Blaming, discussion of suicide attempt, poor coping skills, the author tried their best
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-06-10 04:21:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 30,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15283527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenyZootSuit/pseuds/ZenyZootSuit
Summary: Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes between the time he split from his partner til the time they found him. It had taken just twenty minutes for his life to go to shit





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Blue Bloods always go in pairs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7653313) by [saiyukichan1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saiyukichan1/pseuds/saiyukichan1). 
  * Inspired by [In Memoriam](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10734396) by [shewho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewho/pseuds/shewho). 



> TW: off screen rape, discussion of past rape, suicidal ideology, substance abuse, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and a good bit of victim blaming
> 
> Also, I am not a lawyer. I have never studied law. I apologize to any lawyers reading this for the grossly inaccurate depiction of the trial, and yes I know Erin shouldn’t be assigned the case to prosecute, but I beg creative license.
> 
> Jeff Dunham reference is not mine please don’t sue me
> 
> Set somewhere in the early seasons

_Twenty minutes. Twenty minutes between the time he split from his partner til the time they found him. It had taken just twenty minutes for his life to go to shit._

********

A heart monitor beeped incessantly. He never could stand hospitals. Or all that they signified. The air from a vent fluttered the curtain hanging around his bed ever so slightly. He’d been watching it for some time now, for lack of anything else to do.

“You could use some sleep, Danny,” three nurses and two doctors had told him. Yeah good luck with that.

“Danny!” He moved for the first time in a long time? (could have been minutes, hours, or even days, hell if he knew) at the sound of his wife’s voice, turning his head to look at the doorway as Linda came rushing in, giving him a quick once over. She took in his bruised face, split lip, stitches on the right side of his head, and splint on his left wrist before ultimately deeming it safe to hug him. Danny rubbed her back gently, hating the way his skin shivered at the touch of another human being, especially since that being was his goddamn wife.

He glanced over her shoulder, looking for his sons, who were nowhere in sight. Good. They didn’t need to see their father in this state.

Linda pulled back and look her husband over with concern.

“I was so worried, what happened?”

Ah. The million dollar question. One you couldn’t make him answer honestly if you gave him a million dollars.

“Well, Jackie and I were hunting down a couple of perps, they rabbited and we gave chase, and you know me I ran off on my own, caught one in this back alley, missed the other one behind me, who clobbered me over the head with a two by four and whisked me into a nearby warehouse before Jackie could catch up. They beat me up a little more before the guys found me and here we are.”

Sure, he felt bad for lying to his wife, but she didn’t need to know the truth. Not yet. Not ever, if he had any choice in the matter.

“Danny.” 

“Yes, dear?”

“We’ve been married for 16 years. That’s more than enough time for me to be able to tell when you’re lying.”

Damn it. He pretended not to have heard her.

Linda sighed. “Fine. We can talk about this later. Your dad grabbed the boys from school when word came in about what happened. They’re out in the waiting room with the rest of the family.”

His dad and his sons. Lovely. He felt like he was going to throw up.

Linda sat still on the bed, eyeing him and waiting for an answer. Danny relented.

“Sure, fine, whatever.” And after she left to grab his father and sons, to himself he said, “Let’s get this over with.”

_At least sit up, dummy_

He pushed himself up the bed, hips smarting as he did so. He chewed on his cheek to keep a straight face against the onslaught of annoying emotions the pain drudged up.

“Dad!” cried two young voices and suddenly Danny’s arms were full of 11 and 9 year old. The grin that split across his face came uninhibited. He silently thanked God that his skin didn’t itch at the touch of his sons.

“Howdy boys, how ya been, eh?” He ruffled their hair as they continued to hug him.

“We missed you, Dad!” Jack mumbled, voice muffled in Danny’s chest.

“What, ya just seen me last night!” He ruffled his son’s hair. “I missed you too, buddy.”

“Glad to see you’re doing ok, son.” Danny looked to the doorway to see the hulking figure if the police commissioner. Ok, huh? Yeah, he could play that game.

“Yeah, me too.”

Linda swatted at the boys. “Off, now, don’t squish your father! He’s not going anywhere.”

Reluctantly, the two youngest Reagans clambered off their father to sit on the edge of the bed, just then noticing their father’s black and blue jaw and staring wide eyed at it.

“Would you mind terribly, Linda, if I spoke to my son alone for a moment?” Frank said, carefully watching his son’s face. Danny suddenly felt very, very tired.

His wife nodded and stood, gesturing to her sons. “C’mon you two, we’ll go sit with Aunt Erin and Uncle Jamie.”

“It’ll only take a sec,” Frank said, eyes not leaving his son’s face. Danny looked away, glaring at the window.

_Cutting right to the chase, eh? Not even a show for the boys? Oh boy, this’ll be good._

Linda gave her husband a concerned, lingering glance before heading out. When they were out of earshot, Danny spoke up again.

“What, I got antlers growing outa my ears or something?”

“I read the report, Danny.”

Goddamnit. So much for sweeping this mess under the rug, Danny mused as he tamped down on a swell of nausea. He found he couldn’t look his father in the face.

“Did you, now? Why on Earth did you do that?”

“First of all, I’m the police commissioner and I know everything that goes on in my city. A cop was kidnapped and injured on the job, so of course I received the briefing. Secondly, you are my son, and...the word was it was bad. I needed to know how bad.”

Damn the hospital floor was interesting. So was looking at the wall, or anything other than his father.

“This bad enough for ya?” He hated how soft his voice sounded.

If Danny had been looking, he would have seen Frank’s face lose some of its composure.

“Danny...”

“What?” He turned to at least face in his father’s direction. “What do you want me to say? I messed up and cuz I was stupid, I got hurt.”

Frank looked very sad. “Hurt is putting it very lightly,” he replied carefully, which only served to fan the humiliated anger burning in Danny’s chest.

“Ok fine. Let me revise my report. I messed up and I got raped, is that better?” The fire was extinguished as the words left his mouth, ice replacing it.

“Oh Danny...”

“I don’t want your pity.” The room was silent for a long moment before Danny dragged a hand over his face and continued. “....Who else knows?”

“Jackie, the other cops who found you, Baker received the briefing, I tasked Garrett to keep it away from the press...In the family?...Nobody yet…Erin’ll most likely be assigned the case to prosecute...”

“Fine. Nobody else needs to know. Make sure she knows that. And also that you both know that I don’t wanna talk about it. Period.”

Frank nodded stiffly. “You won’t tell Linda?”

“No, I won’t. If I’d had my way I wouldn’t have told anyone.”

Frank nodded again, seemingly for a lack of any other way to respond.

“Just so you know, the officers who rescued you have been informed of the requirement they keep this confidential.”

“Yeah like that’ll ever happen. By the turn of the next shift everyone’ll know me as that detective who...”

“No.”

Danny snorted. “Won’t I?”

“No. Your superiors won’t stand for it. I won’t stand for it.”

“Oh so now my superiors know? And why wouldn’t they stand for it? Because I’m your son?”

“No, because you are a good cop who got injured in the line of duty and if it was you, or any cop, no one deserves to be mocked for that.”

The humiliation that tightened Danny’s throat made it impossible for him to resist scratching at his father.

“And if I weren’t a cop I would?”

“Now you’re just being combative.”

He couldn’t deny that.

Frank seemed to be waiting for Danny to speak again, something the younger Reagan had absolutely zero inclination to do. After a solid minute of dead silence accompanied by Danny staring blankly at the wall, Frank sighed and turned to the door with a muttered, “I’ll grab your wife.” Danny listened to him leave. 

********

Danny had bugged the doctors enough to discharge him not long after. Linda had brought him fresh clothes, thankfully. He had no idea what had happened to his old ones.

Also thankfully, Sean had gotten into some mischief down the hall, and, Linda having gone to scold him, Danny had been able to quickly discard his hospital gown and dress in his street clothes.

The bruises visible on his hips were too obvious, standing out even amongst the extensive bruising on his stomach and ribs, and like he told his father, that was not a conversation he was planning on having.

He entered the waiting room to a chorus of “Danny!” and once again found himself with an armful of family. He bit his cheek hard enough to draw blood to keep from flinching as Erin and Nicky hugged him tightly.

“Watch the ribs guys!” he rasped.

“Give the man some space! He just got out, doesn’t need to go back in because you two flattened him!” groused his Grandfather.

The women let go of him apologetically, Erin brushing a crease out of Danny’s shirt.

_Stop touching me, damn it._

He found he was quickly running out of juice to keep up his façade.

“How you doing, brother? Heard you got beat up a little.” Jamie Reagan’s smile could melt Arctic ice on a normal day, and that was nothing compared to him seeing his remaining older brother walk out of the hospital in one piece. That alone was enough for Danny to cough up another lie.

“Hey, I’m good. A little squished,” he cast a half-hearted teasing eye at his sister, niece, and sons, “but other than that I’m good. I’ll be fine.” He kicked himself as his voice gave out on the last word, though he managed to cover it with a cough. He didn’t have the energy to try and analyze if Jamie bought it.

“All right, time to get you home to sleep the rest of this off,” Linda cut in, moving Danny forward with a hand firmly on his back. He let himself be moved.

“I’ll see y’all for Sunday dinner,” he called over his shoulder, blatantly avoiding looking at his father, who had remained silent.

*******

Linda was tense the entire car ride home. Ridiculously tense, Danny noted.

“You ok, babe?” he asked quietly.

“I’m fine, Danny,” she replied tersely, before Danny’d finished the last word. That shut him up for the remainder of the trip. Nothing in front of the boys.

Linda seemed to have the same idea. As soon as the car was in park, she suggested that the boys run over to their friends’ down the street real quick, give their father a bit of peace and quiet. Why did he get the feeling peace and quiet was the last thing he was going to get.

He was so damn sore, and _shit_ they’d barely cleaned him up at the hospital, all he wanted was a shower and a stiff drink.

“Honey,” he said as soon as the boys were out of the car. “I get that you have every right to chew me out for what I did, but can we please do this after I shower and nap?”

“Sure, fine, whatever you want. Don’t get your stitches wet,” and she was out of the car and in the house before Danny could even blink. Damn.

 _One foot in front of the other_ , he told himself as he moved up the stairs and into the bedroom.

 _You’ll feel better after you shower_ , he tried to believe as he grabbed a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants out of his drawer, walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. In a flash of anxiety, he turned the lock as well.

He spent a good few minutes staring at his bruised face in the mirror, the stitches along the side of his head from the blow.

Don’t get them wet for a few days, the doctor and now his wife had said. Fuck that.

The warm water felt good on his aching body. So did the privacy of a locked bathroom in his own house.

Maybe he did get a few moments of peace and quiet then.

Not for too long of course, because now that the ordeal finally seemed over, everything came rushing back with a force that almost knocked him down. Chest tightening, lungs drawing in quick, wheezing breaths, he was confronted with the knowledge that the past 24 hours were not something he read in a case file, that he could solve and file away in a week and pretend he forgot about, that they had happened to _him_ and this was something he was going to have to deal with, a memory he would have to _live with for the rest of his life_ and _fuck_ did he not want to do that.

_Grown men don’t cry._

But if a grown man, former soldier and current cop, cries and no one’s there to hear him, did it actually happen?

*******

_The concrete was hard under his back. Someone was talking to him, he could barely hear them. He was shaking, but couldn’t move of his own volition. Police sirens, flashing lights, oh God oh God. Jackie, it was Jackie who was talking to him, holding him tight as he hyperventilated. Reagan, Reagan -Danny!- hang in there-_

And he was bolt upright in bed, t-shirt soaked through with sweat, and fuck he was actually going to puke.

He barely made it to the bathroom in time before he was on his knees and heaving up what little was in his stomach.

“Shit,” he muttered in between pants, head still reeling from the nightmare. He cursed himself. He was hardly a stranger to nightmares. It had been a good long while since one had solidly woken him up.

And he jumped about a foot in the air when a hand suddenly appeared on his shoulder.

“Easy, Danny, it’s just me,” came Linda’s tired voice in the dark. Danny took a deep breath.

“Sorry…you spooked me…”

Linda sat down next to him, leaning against the cabinet and rubbing his back. “Nightmare?” Danny didn’t feel like answering that. “Wanna talk about it?” No.

“Look hun,” he said, somewhat gracefully slipping out from under her hand. “I’m fine. Go back to bed. I’ll be there in a sec.”

“Danny…”

“I said I’m fine.” Maybe that statement came out a little bit harsher than he meant it to…what of it?

He could feel Linda staring at him. He resisted the urge to say something more. Damn it, as far as she was concerned he’d gotten the shit kicked out of him bad enough to land him in the hospital and as far as he was concerned…well he’d earned the right to be a little bit of an ass.

When his wife still didn’t move, he did, with a muttered, “Well I’m going back to bed then.”

He stripped off his soaking wet shirt and tossed in in the hamper, confident the dark would hide what he wanted, before grabbing a new one, climbing back in bed, and pulling the covers over his head. He doubted he’d get any more sleep.

It was a long time before Linda got back in bed.

*******

He’d been ordered to take a few days off.

“But I don’t _want_ a few days off, I’m fine, I _want_ to get back to work,” he’d told his boss over the phone the next morning upon seeing the text “Don’t come in today.”

“If you show up here I’ll place you under house arrest.”

“Look, can I at least drop by and grab a couple cases to work on while I’m ‘under house arrest’?”

“I’ll have Jackie bring ya a couple after her shift today.”

Both men were silent for beats.

“You’re trying to keep me out of the office.”

“Yeah, cuz you deserve a break.”

“Don’t lie to me, Sarge.”

The man on the other end of the line sighed heavily.

“Reagan-“

“You read the report didn’t you?”

“…I did. Look, just-“

“Did everyone suddenly gain access to this report?”

“Someone leaked. We’re looking into who, but-“

Danny was done with this conversation. “Was bound to happen eventually I guess.”

“Just give it til Monday and everyone’ll forget about it.”

“Yeah and let’s hope ‘everyone’ includes me.”

Him hanging up on his boss was hardly anything new.

He let his phone fall from his hand to the table with a loud thump and ran his hand over his face with a muffled “fuck.”

*******

Jamie had just walked in when he was suddenly swamped.

“How’s Danny?”

“Detective Reagan, is he ok?”

“Is your brother gonna be ok? Man I can’t even imagine, how’s he doing?”

Jamie stood there like a deer in the headlights for a solid 30 seconds, eyes darting from cops he knew to random ones he’d never seen before.

“Eh….fine?”

The cops stared at him expectantly. Jamie cleared his throat.

“I…uh…am gonna be late for my shift if I don’t change?”

“Don’t worry about that Jamie,” Renzulli piped up, shouldering he way to the front of the pack. “Is your brother _okay_?”

Jamie was beginning to get confused. “Yeah, he’s fine, I mean a little beat up, but they sent him home from the hospital yesterday… He walked out on his own two feet…That’s about it…” His coworkers looked at him no less expectantly.

Renzulli frowned and reached up to grasp Jamie’s shoulder. “Look, kid, we just wanna know if there’s anything we can do.”

“I mean…I’m sure his wife already gave him plenty of ice packs for the bump on his head…”

Renzulli eyed Jamie. “I know he probably doesn’t want you talking about it…one of these guys is gonna _cough up who let it slip_!” He threw a glare over his shoulder. “In a minute. Just, let him know nobody’s gonna say anything, ‘specially nothing bad.”

The crowd of cops piped up with a chorus of “Here, here” and “No way, never”.

The look Jamie gave his boss may have been considered extremely rude under any other circumstances. He and his boss stared at each other for a moment before Renzulli turned around and shouted, “All right, that’s enough! He’s gotta get to his shift, and you need to get back to yours too!” When the rest of the cops disbanded enough, Renzulli took Jamie by the arm and pulled him toward the locker room.

“Look, we don’t mean to pry, we just wanted to-“

“Wait, hold up.” Renzulli paused and waited for Jamie to continue. “What is it you think you know that I am clearly not privy to?”

It was Renzulli’s turn to look like a deer in the headlights. “Your brother…”

“Yeah, I gathered that, what about my brother?”

Renzulli frowned at him for a moment before quietly saying, “He was raped, Jamie. We just want to make sure he’s ok.”

Jamie stared at his boss, anger suddenly boiling hot in his chest. “What the fuck kind of sick joke is that?!”

Renzulli looked confused, and then relieved. “So he wasn’t, then?”

“No! Who told you that and why do they still have a job here? My brother went out and got hurt trying to do his job and this is how his fellow cops treat him? By starting rumors?”

“That’s good, that’s good to know…”

“ _What’s_ good to know?!”

“Hey, nobody wants to see anybody hurt like that! Least of all a good cop like your brother.”

Jamie took a deep breath. “Well…you can tell all of them that while he may have a bump on his head the size of Mount Everest, other than that he’s fine. Mild concussion, but fine.”

Renzulli nodded. “With pleasure, kid. Send him a couple of ice packs for me, will ya?”

Jamie snorted as his boss left.

*******

The words in the case file all blurred together. Danny blinked to try and focus his eyes. When the lines appeared no clearer, he leaned back in his chair and rubbed at his face. 

“Must need glasses,” he said to an empty house. _Or a decent night’s sleep._ It had been four days since he’d slept for more than a couple of hours. Every night, two hours tops, then nightmare, cold and soaking sweat, then bathroom to throw up. Linda had stopped getting up to make sure he was okay.

Fine, he’d been an ass to her the past few days, but the lack of sleep compiled with the fact that everyone seemed to be walking on eggshells around him, including his sons... Jackie had barely looked him in the eye when she’d brought him work, a mumbled “I’m sorry” reaching Danny’s ears as he’d gratefully accepted the distraction, which he had not been in the mood for. Though he had felt a bit bad for slamming the door in her face.

Someone must have assigned Erin the case, because the day before she’d called him sounding near tears, asking him if he was ok, if he needed anything, what she could do, yada yada. Lock the bastards up, he’d told her and hung up, again, not in the mood for this. Give her a few days to cool off before Sunday dinner.

Linda still hadn’t given him the thrashing he was due, instead having decided to act strangely around him, somewhere between overly sweet and ice cold and done with him (he didn’t particularly blame her, when _he_ recognized he was acting an ass, it must have been bad). Even his sons walked carefully around him, which pissed him off the most. He was their father, they didn’t need to be careful around him. 

He hadn’t spoken to his father since their talk in his hospital room, despite the missed calls and voicemails on his phone.

Three car doors slammed outside and the front door was flung open, the pounding footsteps of 11 and 9 year old moving rapidly towards the kitchen.

“I CALL THE LAST BROWNIE!” Sean yelled.

“HEY! YOU ATE THE LAST ONE!” came Jack’s reply. 

Both skidded to an abrupt halt when they saw their father sitting at the table.

“Oh…sorry Dad…we didn’t know you were in here…” The two looked penitent.

“What are you apologizing for? That you weren’t planning on giving your father a hug before the great war over the last brownie?”

The two boys looked at each other before flying at Danny. He caught the two (with considerably more difficulty than he’d had in prior years when they’d been younger) and laughed sincerely.

“It’s great having you home, Dad,” Sean said when they’d pulled back, gaze already drifting towards the cupboard. 

“S’good to be home…now if you two don’t eat that brownie, I will.”

The boys scrambled to the cupboard.

“Hey, hey! Cut it in half you two!” Danny yelled after them as Jack ran triumphantly into the back yard, brownie in hand.

“I hope they didn’t bother you.” Danny turned as Linda walked in, groceries in hand.

“Oh hey, let me help. Are there more in the car?”

“No, I’ve got it…”

“Really, let me-“

“I said it’s fine!”

Danny backed off at her raised voice. “Okay…”

After watching her toss the bananas on the counter and angrily put the milk in the fridge, Danny decided that the sooner, the better.

“You know you never gave me the verbal thrashing I deserved after that stunt I pulled…can you just let me have it so we can go back to normal?”

Linda slammed the bread down on the counter. “Normal? Normal like you nearly waking up screaming every night? Because I wasn’t a fan of that normal before and I’m certainly not a fan of it now. If you think the boys don’t hear you-“

“Linda.” Danny stood and pulled his wife into a hug, ignoring his own involuntary cringe at the contact. “Yeah, ok, fine. I’m sorry. I’m a little rattled is all. Give me more time, I’ll get over it.”

Linda let him hug her a little longer before replying, “This is what you do. You wait until you’re just removed enough from something to bury it and then carry on like it doesn’t affect you, but it does. You did it when you came back from the war, you do it every time something bad happens on the job, and you’re doing it now.”

Danny pulled away, and, still holding onto her shoulders, tried to catch her eye. “I just got a little beat up, I’ll be-“

“But you didn’t. Just get a little beat up…” She was staring at the center of his chest, unblinking. “…I was out in the hall…in the hospital…I overheard the conversation with your father…”

Danny let go of her like he’d been burned, hands coming up to rub over his face and back through his hair as he turned back to the table. The concentration of oxygen in the room seemed to have thinned drastically.

Linda looked at him miserably. “I love you, Danny, I just want to help you…”

“You could’ve helped me by not bringing it up.”

“You’re not processing this at all-“

He spun back around to face her. “What do you want me to do, Linda, hmm?”

“Like they told you when you came back from the war, you have to-“

“Acknowledge it? Fucking...talk about it? I don’t want to. I don’t need to. I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.”

“I’m fine if I say I’m fine!”

“How could you be fine? Those men raped you!”

Danny bit the inside of his cheek. “I know. I was there.”

Linda was crying. “Danny, please, you have to-“

“The only thing I gotta do is forget about it, and I can’t do that with people _constantly bringing it up_.” She flinched when he yelled, loud enough that the boys probably heard him outside. Damn it…he’d feel bad about it later. “Now if you’ll excuse me.” He snatched his case file from the table and a beer from the fridge and walked out the front door.

Just to sit on the front step, jeez, he’s not that much of an asshole.

*******

Jamie got to his father’s house early that Sunday to help with the cooking.

“Hey Jamie,” Frank greeted him when he walked in.

“Hey Dad. Brought the carrots.”

“Oh good. Get started on those?”

“Sure.”

They cooked in amicable silence for a while. Frank broke it with a good natured, “How was your week?”

“Eh…it was okay…”

Frank turned to look at his son. “Just okay?”

“Yeah, I mean with Danny getting hurt and all…and then some jackass had the gall to start some pretty nasty rumors about him.”

“What kind of rumors?” 

Jamie couldn’t hide his surprise at the intensity he saw on his father’s face. “Um…well the entire twelfth precinct bombarded me the day after he got hurt, asking if he was okay, really weird questions, I asked Renzulli what was going on, he pulls me aside and explains that they’re all just concerned about Danny cuz he was _raped_.”

“I see.” Frank had gone back to chopping. After a moment so did Jamie.

“It just bothers me that somebody would 1) start rumors about an injured cop and 2) make a joke about something as awful as rape. That’s just terrible.”

“I agree.” Jamie looked over at his father, hearing the careful measuredness of his voice. His commissioner voice. The one he used when he could neither confirm nor deny something.

“…There isn’t any truth to those rumors, is there?”

“‘Course not.” With escalating concern, Jamie found he didn’t buy it.

“Don’t lie to me, Dad.” When Frank didn’t reply, Jamie pressed on. “What happened to my brother?”

Frank put down his knife and rubbed his eyes. “He…asked me not to say anything to anyone else.”

Jamie leaned forward, suddenly out of breath. 

“It was true…”

“It was true,” Frank echoed sadly. Both stood in silence for a moment.

“Those perps, they...”

“Yes.”

Jamie felt sick. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

“He made it very clear to me he didn’t want this ever brought up again.”

“So he’s just planning on forgetting about it like he did his time in Fallujah? I’m sure it’ll turn out just as well.”

“Jamie, he can’t find out I told you-“

“Well, you didn’t tell me. I figured it out myself.” Jamie scrubbed at his face. “I told Renzulli it was all crap and he was gonna spread that around. That’s something.”

“That’s something.”

Another beat of silence.

“…I’m gonna talk to him.”

“Jamie, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“I concur with Francis.”

Both men jumped at the sound of the eldest Reagan’s voice. 

“Pops!” Frank started.

“What? You two weren’t talking very quietly.” The former commissioner moved to refill his cup of coffee. “If he said he doesn’t want to talk about it, leave him be.”

Jamie threw up his hands, exasperated. “How are you so calm about this? Gramps, I can’t just let my brother handle this by himself!”

“Why not? He’s a big boy, not to mention a cop and a former soldier. He can take care of himself.” Both Frank and Jamie seemed to think the old man had finally lost it.

“I gotta at least let him know I’m there to help him! He can rip my head off if he wants. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Grandpa rolled his eyes. “Fine. If you have to talk to him then you,” he pointed to Jamie “talk to him. But if he tells you to buzz off, respect his wishes.”

“But-“

“Maybe try putting yourself in his shoes and asking yourself what you would want. And do it after dinner?” With that, the old men left the younger two flabbergasted and totally overruled.

*******

How do you act normal knowing what he knew? Jamie wondered as he stared around the table at his family. Danny sat diagonal from him, like he always did, looking worse than he had fresh out of the hospital. He must not have slept in days, judging by the dark purple smudges under his eyes clashing horribly with the yellowing bruises and his generally more-disheveled-than-normal appearance. He and Linda hadn’t so much as looked at each other since they’d arrived. So she knew. The boys only seemed to know that their parents were fighting. For the best really. Erin kept trying to catch Danny’s eye, though he seemed to have developed artful ways of avoiding her gaze. Guess she was prosecuting then. Frank had been uncharacteristically silent, not uttering so much as a peep after grace. Nicky looked at them all like they were absolutely crazy, but stayed quiet, picking up on the mood that whatever was going on was not to be discussed at the table. 

 _The only thing off limits_ , Jamie mused.

The only one who was acting normal, or in fact talking at all, was Grandpa, who was animatedly lamenting how Godawful the Rangers were doing this season, and if this was a carryover from the unfortunate end to the Yankees’ World Series bid, then so help him. If there was one thing Danny could always talk about, it was sports (or cases, but sports was definitely the more lighthearted of the two, especially since Danny hadn’t been into work since the incident) and Grandpa knew that. Anything to be normal, Jamie supposed, since the rest of them were useless at it. 

“Not hungry, Uncle Danny?” Nicky piped up during a lull in conversation. His brother looked down at his plate, where he’d been absentmindedly pushing around what little food he’d taken.

“Not really, kid.”

Nicky nodded, clearly unsure of what else to say, given the mood. No one else helped her out.

Danny looked around the table and shrugged his shoulders. “What is this, a morgue in here?” Jamie huffed a small laugh. Everyone else stayed silent. Danny rolled his eyes. “Ok then, well, lovely chattin’ with ya, Gramps. I’ll be in the kitchen cleaning up if anybody needs me.”

When Danny was gone, Grandpa shot Jamie a disappointed look. Well, he couldn’t let that stand. He got up and followed his brother into the kitchen.

Danny glanced up at him from where he was boxing up the leftover food.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Nothing, I…just wanted to talk.”

“About?”

Jamie took a deep breath. “What happened.”

“What do you mean ‘what happened’? I was stupid, got beat up, got patched up, nothing else to say really.”

Jamie picked at a seam on his jeans. “…That’s not all though, is it?” he said quietly. Danny didn’t respond, continuing to box up food, shoulders tense. Jamie swallowed and continued. “The perps, I…a little bird told me what happened.”

“And by chance was that little bird Dad?” Jamie nearly shivered under his brother’s ice cold gaze.

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Sure it wasn’t.” He turned away from Jamie, making an annoyed gesture.“Well thanks for your concern, but leave it. I don’t wanna talk about this.”

“…You sure?”

“Positive.”

“…If that’s what you want.”

“That is absolutely what I want.”

“Okay.”

Danny seemed surprised by that. “…Just ‘okay’? You’re not going to fuss at me about how I should be processing my feelings or some shit?”

“Well, like Grandpa said, you’re a big boy. You can take care of yourself.”

Danny snorted. “Apparently not.” Jamie tried not to flinch at the implication. “Grandpa knows too? What was this, plastered on the front page of the Times?”

Jamie shook his head. “Word just…got around.”

“It seems to do that around here.” He sighed and gestured to the rest of the food still sitting out. “You gonna help me or what?”

They packaged the rest of the chicken in silence.

“You going back to work tomorrow?” Jamie finally asked.

“Yep.”

“…Would I be encouraging a bad habit if I invited you out for a drink after work?”

Danny smirked. “I like the way you think, kid brother mine. Why? Do I look like I could use a drink?”

Jamie smiled. “Just a little.”

Danny rubbed his chin. “Is it the stubble? I think it makes me look kinda hip.”

“I think it makes you look kinda homeless.”

Danny grumbled something and threw a towel at him.

They cleaned up the rest of the kitchen and did dishes in amicable silence. By the end of it, Danny looked a bit better. That was something. 

Funny, Jamie mused when the night was over. Maybe Grandpa had been right.

*******

Danny stood in front of the bathroom mirror, rubbing at the dark smudges under his eyes, as if that would make them go away. His sister would tease him that they clashed with his tie. He looked somewhat dead, with half the skin on his face still stained a sickly yellow, his lip scabbed over. He played with the velcro on his wrist brace.

The ever present nightmares had plagued him yet again, though this time he’d not thrown up _and_ had been able to fall back to sleep, something he’d previously thought impossible. He felt better than he had since last week. Damn what had he looked like last week?  

“Doin’ fine. You’re doing fine,” he told himself as he straightened his tie, and willed himself to believe it.

Downstairs, Linda was just finishing packing the boys’ lunches.

“You dropping them off today?”

“Of course,” Linda answered blandly.

Danny sighed. “Linda…I’m sorry. I should’ve told you.”

“You don’t have to apologize to me. You’re right, you should deal with this in whatever way you think best. Just…this cannot affect us like it did last time, ok? I’m concerned about you, of course! But I’m concerned about the boys’ well being too. They’re not blind, Danny.”

 _Yeah Danny, ya dummy._ “Or deaf…I should at least apologize for yelling at you.”

Linda smiled a little. “Thanks…maybe I deserved it for the less than genteel way I brought it up…”

Danny kissed her temple. “No, never. I’ll see you later. Have a good day, ok?”

“You too!”

He snorted humorlessly. Yeah, good luck with that. 

He wondered which would be worse, the taunting or the pity?

*******

 _Man up, Reagan,_ he told himself, walking from his car to the precinct.

 _You’re doing fine,_ he told himself as he opened the door to the bullpen. The familiar raucousness brought a sense of security he hadn’t realized he’d been missing. He smiled.

“Reagan!”

He didn’t see whoever had called his name, distracted instead by every being in the room suddenly falling dead silent and turning in his direction. Well if that wasn’t unsettling. He set his mouth in a hard line.

“Morning guys. Happy Monday.” He threw as much of his normal sass in as he could muster.

“How you doing, Danny?” That was Jackie. He offered her a smile.

“Fine.”

“Good to have you back, Reagan.” His boss leaned against the door to his office, grinning at the detective.

“Thanks Sarge.”

Gormley looked around the bullpen. “What, you guys solve everything just like that?”

A few snorts were heard and a bit of quiet chatter picked back up.

Danny jumped (just a little) at a large smack. Upon turning, he concluded the noise had belonged to the large stack of files Jackie had just smacked down on the desk.

“Happy Monday!” she joked, obviously watching for his reaction. Gauging.

“Oh boy.” He rubbed at the back of his head, staring at the stack. Jackie grinned. 

“Hey Reagan! How’s the ass?” Danny froze, the room suddenly dead silent. Had Danny noticed the rest of his coworkers, he would have seen them seethe.

But he didn’t, turning around to look upon the face of the jackass who had just dealt him quite the insult. The bastard leaned against the desk across from his, grinning arrogantly. He didn’t care to remember the cop’s name.

“How’s the ass, huh?” He swayed nonchalantly around to glance at his partner and boss, who looked on with a mixture of horror, disgust, and fury. “That’s funny, that’s-“ and he whirled around and slammed his fist as hard as he could into bastard’s smug face. The feeling of the other’s nose crumbling under his knuckles was the most satisfying thing he’d felt in a while.

The cop crumbled to the floor, grasping at his face, nose gushing blood. Danny shook out his hand.

“Anybody else got anything cute to say? Hmm?”

The room remained dead silent. Gormley glared at the cop on the floor, who lay cradling his face. “Interesting,” he said. “Tripped and fell.” A few other cops echoed him.

When Danny turned back to his partner, she was nodding approvingly. “Solid hit.”

Danny smirked. 

******

By the time Danny got to the bar, he was exhausted. The pity. The pity was definitely worse. He could counter taunts with fists. Pity? He couldn’t do anything about that.

Jamie was already sitting at the counter, drumming his fingers on a bottle of beer. A fresh one sat next to him. Danny half collapsed into the seat beside his brother.

“Hey Danny,” his brother greeted. Danny nodded back. “Rough day?”

“You could say that.”

Jamie didn’t push farther, waiting for his brother to elaborate, until he saw his bruised knuckles. 

“What’s the story behind that?” He gestured to Danny’s hand.

Danny lifted his hand up and shrugged. “Somebody said something cute.” He took a drink of his beer.

Jamie waited. “…And?”

“And I broke his nose.”

Jamie nodded. “Nice…and?”

“And what?”

“Don’t tell me you got in trouble.”

Danny shook his head. “Oh hell no, Sarge pretended the guy tripped.”

“Good.” They sat in amicable silence for a moment. “What’d he say?”

“Who, Sarge?”

“No, the other guy.”

“Ah.” Danny took a drink. “Rape joke.”

Jamie made an annoyed sound. “That’s disgustingly rude.”

“No kidding.”

Jamie studied the tired slump of his brother’s shoulders. “How was everybody else?”

“Pfffttt, penitent. Pitying. It’s exhausting.”

“Yeah I bet…but you made it.”

“That I did, baby brother. That I did.”

*******

Danny would’ve thought it pretty hard to surpass the previous week in terms of suckiness.

He was quickly finding that to be wrong. His boss had called him into his office that day to remind him that he still needed to schedule his compulsory appointment with the department shrink.

“Why? I didn’t discharge my service weapon.”

His boss stared at him. “…You really asking me that, Reagan?”

“No, I’ll just read your mind.”

“No need to get snippy…C’mon Danny, isn’t it obvious?”

Danny seethed. “Not so much.”

The Sergeant looked exasperated. “Any cop who gets injured on the job gets an appointment.”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s for the shrink to decide.”

“Reagans don’t do this.”

“They do now.”

“And if I still say no?”

“You can sit at your desk and work cold cases.” Which he basically got anyway because of a few choice words he muttered on his way out.

The cases his boss had dumped on them were cold. Ungodly cold. God bless Jackie for agreeing to keep him company during his “vocabulary punishment”.After his boss had come by and dropped a scrap of paper on his desk containing a time, date, and office number he had groused about how this week couldn’t possibly get any worse when, comically, his phone rang. He and Jackie stared at it.

“Tempting fate there, Reagan,” Jackie murmured. 

“Oh boy,” Danny grumbled and picked it up, seeing the screen flash  the caller ID ‘Erin’ before answering it. “Is it too much to hope my baby sister is the bearer of good news? Possibly that warrant I asked for?” 

“…I’m afraid not, Danny.” The detective briefly mused that this was the first time he’d spoken to his sister since the incident. Fuck, he hated that. He was classifying everything as being in terms of ‘the incident’.

“Well, what’dya got for me?”

“…You might want to go somewhere private and sit down.”

“Just hit me with it.”

“Danny, just do it.”

He rolled his eyes. Jackie watched with interest. “Ok, I’m sitting down. Hit me.”

Erin took a deep breath. “The judge didn’t take kindly to the matter with which you collected evidence on this latest case.”

Danny chewed on his lip. “And?”

“…And…she threw most of it out.”

“ _And?”_

Erin made a frustrated noise. “ _And_ the bastards are going to walk!”

Danny stood up abruptly, chair loudly scraping the floor, and stormed out the door, feeling Jackie’s concerned gaze burn into his back. Once safely and privately out in the hall, he hissed, a note of hysteria seeping into his voice, “What do you _mean_ they’re going to walk? You’re just going to let them walk?”

“Danny,” Erin sounded upset. “Without most of the evidence we can’t nail them for anything and without an witness testimony we can’t nail them for-.” She cut herself off. Danny observed from what felt like a distance that he was starting to hyperventilate. “Unless you testify. If you testify, I can get a grand jury to indict them for resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, aggravated kidnapping, and...and aggravated rape in the first degree.”

He felt sick. “Only if I testify.”

“Yes.”

“To what they did?”

“Yes.” 

“I’m gonna have to call you back.” Without preamble, he strode into the nearest bathroom and heaved up his guts.

Jackie was waiting for him outside when he came out. She looked him up and down, taking in his now paler face and cold sweat dampening his collar.

“Bad news?”

“Something like that.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

Danny scrubbed a hand over his face. “Me bending the rules has finally come back to bite me hard.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they threw all the evidence out on the case last week, and now my sister says I gotta testify or the perps are gonna walk.”

Jackie looked aghast.“Isn’t there anything else they can do? Any other path they could take?”

“I...I gotta call my sister back, I didn’t ask for details, had to puke first.”

Jackie nodded sympathetically and let him go.

The cold city air cleared Danny’s head enough to call his sister back. She picked up on the first ring.

“Are you ok?”

“Fine...Tell me what I gotta do.”

“...You’ll do it?”

It took Danny a sec to get the breath in his lungs enough to respond. “...Yeah.Anything to put ‘em away so they don’t hurt anybody else.”

Erin was silent on the other end of the line. “...Are you going to be ok to do this, Danny?”

_I’m gonna have to be_

“I’ll be fine, Erin.Promise.”

********

“You’re going to testify!”

“Shhh” Danny nodded his head up to the ceiling, where their sons slept upstairs.Linda shot him a look.“Yes.I’m going to testify.”

“And what does that look like?”

Danny shrugged and drummed his fingers on his beer bottle. “Probably like me talking about one of the worst days of my life to a room full of complete strangers and my baby sister.”

Linda reached across the table and took his hand, giving it a squeeze. Danny let her, staring the cabinets on the opposite side of the room.

“I can be there too if you want.”

“Oh hell no **.** It’s gruesome, Linda, you don’t need to hear this, won’t do any good.”

“If you want or need the support to get through it and put those bastards away, I’ll be there.I don’t care how gruesome it is.”

“Look, I’ve sat through rape trials before. The whole process is horrific and the cross examination... They’re gonna tear me apart, you don’t need to see this.”

“Hey, look at me.” Reluctantly, Danny did. “I won’t ever think differently of you. I know society likes to go around and say ‘it’s not your fault’ until it sounds cliché, but it’s true.”

Danny would rather do paperwork for the rest of the year than have this conversation. “Yes, dear, thanks-“

“Don’t interrupt me.” Danny shut his mouth. “I don’t care that you are a detective and an ex-marine, and that you undoubtedly think you should have been able to prevent it. Don’t give me that face, Danny.It’s not your fault.There was nothing you could have done differently, ok?”

“Ok.” Anything to end this conversation before he did something dumb, like cry.

“Can I give you a hug now?”

“I really am fine, Linda.”

“It’s not for you, it’s for me.”

“Alright then.” 

********

At the time and date given to him by his boss (with some substantial threats), Danny showed up at the shrinks office, dreading this.Maybe the boss man was right, just get it over with.

He knocked and was greeted by the young brunette everyone knew, loved and feared.

 **“** She can really get under your skin and read what you don’t want read,” Jamie, who knew from his experience after his first shooting, had told him after Sundaydinner.

“Gee, thanks, that makes me feel loads better.”

“I’d guess it’d be less jarring if you’re at least expecting it.”

The brunette smiled at him.

“Good morning, Detective Reagan. Come on in.”

He muttered a thank you and went in, sitting stiffly in a chair across from her desk.

She settled behind it, straightening the file on her desk and looking up at him. Danny didn’t return the favor.

“What brings you in here today, Detective?”

“A couple tangible threats from my boss to sideline me until I come do my mandatory appointment.”

She chuckled. “That’s a pretty valid reason.”

Danny stared at the file on her desk.

“Not to be rude, doc, but I got a lot of work to do, so can we just cut to the chase so I can get outta here?”

She nodded. “Would you like to start or would you like me to?”

Danny remained silent.

“Ok, well, I was given the responding officers’ reports so I would have a little bit of background before you came in. That must have been tough.”

He didn’t feel like responding to that.

“I also heard you’re going to have to testify.”

Danny nodded slowly.

“How do you feel about doing that?”

“I mean...they gotta go away and if I’m the only one that can put em there then I’ll do what I gotta do.”

She nodded. “How are you feeling physically and mentally?”

Danny bristled. “Is that a joke?”

“Of course not. Have you been met with jokes of that nature?”

“...A few.”

“Did you report them to your supervisor?”

“I dealt with em.”

The shrink smiled. “Yes, I heard one of the officers was sporting a new nose shape.”

Danny didn’t respond.

“Well, if you’d allow me to make my own observations?” When he made no objection she continued. “Judging by your eyes, I’d say sleep has been elusive. Your suit looks a bit big on you, so you haven’t been eating much. You’re pale, tense-“

A door slammed loudly down the hall. Danny jolted before quickly recovering himself.

“...Jumpy. Irritable, if these new complaints against you are anything to go by. Maybe a loss of interest in the things you used to enjoy? A feeling of disconnect?”

No, Jamie, expecting to be read like a book does not make it any less jarring.

“This is perfectly normal after undergoing a trauma. The important thing is that you learn methods to deal properly with the aftermath so it doesn’t develop into post-traumatic-stress.”

She gave him an opportunity to speak. He didn’t take it.

“I also saw in your file that you’ve been screened for PTSD before and showed symptoms.”

“I got over it.”

She gave him an empathetic look that screamed ‘that’s bullshit’.

“Listen, I understand that you want to get back to your job, but your brain will process this event or it won’t, and not acknowledging it will only increase the chance that the symptoms you’re experiencing will stick around for longer than I’m sure you’d prefer.”

“Ok, doc. I’ll process it. Can I go back to work now?”

“...How about this. Talk about it, just a little. You don’t have to go into details or even talk about the event at all. You can tell me about how you’ve been handling it in the days and weeks following. And I promise that I’ll sign off, provided I don’t hear anything overly concerning.”

“You know doc,” Danny started, shifting in his chair. “I bet that trick really does work magic. Like they say, the floodgates open and everything just starts pouring out, right?”

“For some, yes.”

“Well listen, like you said, I gotta testify and I’d really rather not do it twice.”

She nodded. “That’s understandable. Would I be able to convince you to schedule a session after you testify.”

“Well...no.”

She chuckled. “At least you’re straightforward.” She opened a desk drawer. “I should tell you, your boss is very concerned. If you don’t voluntarily come back, he was sounding like he might send you.”

“Of course.”

She handed him his form. “I really hope you will come back, Danny. I would very much like to try and help you.”

He muttered another ‘thanks’ on his way out, wondering how on Earth he’d actually been able to weasel out of that.

*******

He had testified before a grand jury and they had indicted both perps, though only because they really would indict a ham sandwich. He had only been able to bring himself to give a watered down and sketchy version of the whole truth. He’d been worried he’d throw up in court otherwise, or else pass out from hyperventilating. Honestly, the strength of his negative physical reaction surprised him. He’s have to do better during the trial. This case rested on him. No pressure.

As if it hadn’t gone to shit already, he began to feel as if he was losing a hold on his life. Unfortunately, his family noticed.

It took an embarrassingly long time for Danny to notice that his brother and grandfather, the only two who acted normal around him these days, had been taking extra steps to firmly insert themselves into Danny’s life. Jamie always seemed to have time these days to meet up with him after work. His grandfather had taken to calling him (always when Danny was on a break, how the old man figured that out, Danny had no idea) to just chatter. He didn’t seemed to mind that Danny never really had much to say.

He’d never admit it out loud, but the normalcy was nice.

The rest of his family was just..strange. They were always acting disgustingly _careful_. Even his sons and niece had picked up that habit. He doubted they knew why, but anyone who had eyes could see that _something_ life changing had occurred. He tried his best to keep from looking too dead, but there was only so much you could do when you’d been averaging a solid 1.5 hours of sleep, if any at all, for weeks on end.

Jamie had called him that morning as he’d been driving to the courthouse the day he was set to testify in court. 

“You gonna be ok, Danny?” he’d asked. Danny hated that question.

“What do you think?” he’d replied nastily. Jamie seemed to take it in stride.

“Don’t suppose you’d consider getting hammered with your kid brother after all this?”

“You know, Linda’s starting to get concerned you’re encouraging alcoholism.”

“Not to get involved, but she shouldn’t pretend you wouldn’t go home and do it alone, ruminating on top of that,” Jamie said cheerily.

Danny was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. The kid was right, but before he could come up with a snarky reply, Jamie had quipped out a time and place and hung up.

Danny fiddled with his phone outside the courtroom as he waited for his sister, reading a monotonous report on something or other from someplace, he wasn’t really paying attention.

“Hey Danny.” There was Erin. He lamented that they were the same height, and since she always wore heels, he got to look up at her.

“Hey sis.”

“You doing ok?”

He didn’t dignify that with an answer. “How much of an ass can I expect the defense to be?”

Erin groaned. “A big one, unfortunately. This one’s the very definition of sketchy. I’ll reign him in as much as I can, but he’s going to be rough on you, no doubt.”

“Goody.” 

“Thank you for doing this, I know it’s hard.”

Danny smiled a little. “Don’t mention it…really. Don’t mention it.”

Erin laughed.

*******

His heart felt like it was gonna beat out of his chest.

 _You big dummy, nothing’s gonna happen to you here_.

He did not relish in facing perp number one. Or the room full of strangers.

_Man up._

They called him in. 

*********

He’d sat in this chair many times before.

_Never under these circumstances._

His sister had said something, fuck he missed it. The perp’s eyes on him were making him sweat.

“Sorry please?”

She repeated herself. Could you tell us what occurred on the night of Monday, November the third.

Sure.

He found he had no words.

_C’mon dummy, you dream about this every night. It’s not like you don’t remember, just tell em!_

And yet he could force a word out of his mouth. It felt like he was sitting directly behind his body, connected but not. Certainly not in control.

“Detective Reagan?” Erin said, concerned.

There was a kid sitting in the back. In reality, she was probably in her early twenties. A kid to him. 

_Could have been her, you know. Could still be if you don’t speak up. And tell ‘em everything._

He took a deep breath.

********

Erin had tried a lot of cases. A lot of shitty, gruesome, horribly cases.

Technically, she’d heard worse.

She’d even heard the watered down version her brother had only barely gotten through during the indictment. Nothing could have prepared her for listening to her brother fully recount his rape. In as much detail as we need to bring him down, she’d told him when he’d asked how much they needed to know. He hadn’t disappointed.

She’d put them away for this. Forever.

She felt like the worst person on the planet for the probing questions she had to ask him.

“And you’re _positive_ it was that man there, whom you have just identified for the jury, who was the perpetrator?”

“Yep.” His voice sounded so fucking dull. She couldn’t stand it. “I saw his face very clearly.” Positions reversed, Erin doubted she would’ve been able to throw sass into any of this the way he did.

She nodded. “No further questions at this time, your honor.”

At some point, Danny’s posture had slouched in a typical Danny fashion. When the defense council stood for the cross examination, Danny straightened his back and stared directly at the attorney.

“That’s a very convincing story you have there, Mr. Reagan.”

“Detective.”

“Do you have any medical evidence to corroborate this tale?”

 _Are you shitting me?_ Erin glowered, seething at the attorney’s tone of voice.

“Yep,” Danny snarked.

Erin presented the medical evidence, as well as the reports given by the officers who’d rescued her brother as well as his partner, Jackie Curatola. She may have forgotten to mention to Danny that she had two of them outside ready to testify if need be.

And she was worried that she would need to. The defense was shredding her brother. Or trying to. He had nothing in any way of a decent defense and he knew it, so he was going to drag Danny through as much mud as he could without being held in contempt. Erin understood well enough that a public defender had to do their best to defend whomever they were assigned or risk being disbarred, but what she could not understand was why any decent human being would treat a victim (she hated thinking of her brother like that) the way he was treating Danny. 

“You mentioned you couldn’t recall details of the room, that everything was blurred out. Could that be because of the head injury you sustained?”

Danny shrugged. “I mean maybe.”

“So are you really certain that it was in fact my client who, ah, raped you?”

He said it so mockingly. Erin was on her feet before she fully processed the words.

“Objection!”

Her opponent scoffed. “On what grounds?”

“Sustained.” The judge glared at the counsel for the defense. “Lose the tone, Mr. Johnson.” 

He asked his question again.

“I saw his face very clearly,” her brother replied.

For such a sleazy attorney, this guy had certainly mastered the art of faking it until you make it through cleverly phrased questions. Erin might break a few laws herself by the time this was over. 

He’d gotten good since she last saw him in court, but she was still better, successfully arguing away several more of his nasty questions as leading and intimidating the witness. 

“At no point have you mentioned that you fought back against the perpetrators.” Erin could not believe this. “I would think that would be a pretty important piece of the story for you to just forget. Did you at any point attempt to resist your attacker?”

Her brother shook, just a little.

“I was tied up.”

“I would reckon that means you didn’t. And if you didn’t, well, were you raped at all then?”

Erin very nearly trembled with rage. “Objection, your Honor!” 

“Sustained,” the judge agreed sharply. “Mr. Johnson, if you do not stop trying to intimidate the witness I will hold you in contempt of this court!” The defense at least had the decency to look a bit penitent. The judge, an older woman who Erin simultaneously liked and disliked, turned to Danny. “Detective Reagan, if you need a break-“

“I’m fine, your honor.” His voice held steady, as it had the entire time, but he was clearly not fine, white as a sheet, hand shaking when he raised it to wipe sweat out of his eye, the cross examination clearly beginning to wear on him. The judge looked unconvinced.

“Well, you need only ask.”

Danny nodded.

The defense had nothing, Erin could reiterate. He had no further questions, and Danny was dismissed from the stand. Erin brought in Detective Curatola and one of the other responding officers, just to be safe. And she snuck them in through the back, so Danny wouldn’t see.

At the end of the day she met her brother outside the courtroom.

“You did good, Danny.”

“Yeah? I’ll savor it, don’t hear that everyday.”

She smiled a little, reaching out to pluck at her brother’s white dress shirt under his suit jacket, transparent in its soaked state.

“You should sit down and drink something.”

“Yeah really, thought I was gonna sweat out every ounce of my water weight in there. They trying to slow roast us or something?”

Erin had found it to be quite chilly.

She parked her brother on a bench with a bottle of water, ignoring his fussing about how he was fine she didn’t need to mother him jeez after all _he_ was older.

“Sorry you had to hear all that shit, sis,” he said after a while, hands fiddling with the bottle cap as he watched the passersby.

Erin frowned at him. “You have nothing to apologize for. Because of you, those bastards are gonna go away for a long time.”

“Yeah.” After a bit, he continued, “Now I know you and Linda talk about everything-“

“I’d never tell her any of that!”

“Good. She doesn’t need to know.”

Erin didn’t respond, wondering what she would do in his position. She couldn’t imagine sitting on it alone, but then again, she could hardly imagine talking about it. 

“You gonna make me do that again for the next one?”

“Only if he pleads not guilty, which will be unlikely after this outcome and all the evidence we have...want me to drive you home?”

“Nah, I’m going over to meet Jamie at a bar. I am planning on getting hammered.”

Erin laughed, hoping she sounded convincing. “Can I hug you, please?”

Danny made a face. “Why? I’m disgusting.”

She hugged him anyway. “You’ll be ok, Danny.”

“Yeah.”

Erin swallowed hard to hold back tears.

*******

“Francis!”

“Yeah Pop?” he yelled back down the stairs.

“Someone here to see you!”

Frank found that to be strange, he wasn’t expecting anyone.

Upon reaching the bottom of the stairs, he was met with the sight of his rather frazzled looking daughter.

“Erin! What a surprise.” His daughter looked at him, eyes brimming with tears, and practically fell into his arms. He hugged her tight. “Honey, what happened?” His daughter shook her head where it was buried in his chest. Frank let her stay there, patting her back, until she pulled back and wiped at her eyes, sniffing.

“Danny…Danny testified today.”

“And?”

“It’ll be a conviction, no doubt.”

Frank nodded. “That’s good news, so why the tears?”

Erin choked a little, a few more tears spilling down her cheeks. “ _What those bastards did to him_ …and the defense, they tore him apart-“

“What?”

“He was going on and on about the head injury Danny received during the incident as if that would somehow discredit _everything_ … and they tried to say... tried to say he hadn’t been...at all! Just because he didn’t fight back, he couldn’t fight back! It made no sense.” She sighed. “I objected to all of it, and the judge agreed, and I backed Danny up with two other witnesses, but…”

“I can’t imagine being put through that and then have to sit there and listen to someone tell you you’re lying,” Frank finished for her. Erin nodded.

“And the perp was in the room the whole time—“

“What!” Frank was astounded. “Why was he not removed?”

“I couldn’t get the request to go through, and Danny just wanted it over with...it got to him, Dad, you could see it.”

“He’s not alone now, is he?"

Erin shook her head. “No, he said he was going to a bar with Jamie.”

“And Jamie confirmed that?” Erin nodded. Frank shrugged. “Maybe they’ve got the right idea.” He walked to his liquor cabinet and poured two glasses of whiskey.

“…It was bad?”

“You read the report, Dad, of course it was.” She took the glass from him and sipped at it. “…It was bad…it was so much worse than the report or what he said at the indictment hearing, he…” She broke off, trying hard not to cry. Frank focused on the burn of the whiskey in an attempt to do the same. “He doesn’t want my help. He doesn’t want anyone’s help,” Erin cried quietly. “I want to help him, there’s no way he doesn’t need it, but _I don’t know what to do.”_

Frank didn’t know either.

*********

Perhaps Jamie should’ve curbed his brother a little more than he did.

They were both drunk (that may have been putting it lightly, plastered would be better), Danny much more so than Jamie. He couldn’t find it in himself to be penitent, after what his brother had had to do today. At least he was smiling now. He hadn’t really done that in the better part of a month.

“And then...and then he tried to convince me it didn’t happened,” Danny cackled. “I thought Erin was gonna be next on trial for murder.”

Jamie laughed along with him, head buzzing pleasantly.

Danny took a couple deep breaths, downing another shot of vodka before glancing at his watch.

“Aww shit...Linda’s gonna tar and feather me for coming home at this hour on a Tuesday, let alone pig drunk, I gotta sober up.”

“What time is it?”

“Like 11.”

“Ughhh I gotta be at work in six hours.”

“I remember that fondly.”

“You could sleep on my couch if you want and get the subway to work tomorrow.”

“Make that tar, feather, and decapitate.”

Jamie snorted and watched Danny stagger to his feet before almost tipping over.

“Hope you weren’t planning on driving.”

“Well I kinda was.”

“And you’re planning on hailing a cab now, right?”

“Ehhh...”

...Maybe Jamie didn’t do such a good thing after all.

“Oh hell no, Danny, you can barely stand up straight-“

“I’ll be fine-“ he staggered a bit. “Just give me a sec.”

“No, Danny! You’re drunk, I’m drunk!” He stole a quick glance at his brothers pockets, trying to pinpoint which one he kept his keys in.

Danny made a face and made his way to the bar door, muttering something about Jamie mothering him.

Jamie quickly followed him, pretending to fall into his back while deftly snatching his keys.

Danny ignored his brother as Jamie continued to try and grab a cab, until he fumbled in his pockets for his keys.

Turning around and looking incredulously at his brother, Danny growled, “Give me my keys.”

“I don’t have ‘em.”

“Jamie.”

“Get in a cab and maybe they’ll reappear.”

“Jamison, give me my fucking keys!”

“No!” Danny had never acted like this as far back as Jamie could remember. It was beginning to scare him. “You’ll get yourself killed!”

“So?”

Jamie was astounded. “What do you mean ‘so’?!”

“I mean so what? Who gives a damn? Certainly not me!” Danny rubbed his face angrily. “Guess you’re right, I could hurt somebody. I’ll take that cab, maybe I’ll get lucky and catch a stray bullet on the ride home.”

That...that was scary. His brother never talked like that, ever. Jamie stood, open mouthed, staring at his brother and maybe it was just the alcohol amplifying everything but a lump grew in his throat, threatening tears.

Danny didn’t seem to comprehend the gravity of his statement, throwing an angry, “I said I’ll take the fucking cab!” over his shoulder as he stalked off down the street, presumably to hail a not sketchy one. 

Jamie watched him go, his brother’s keys in his pocket.

*********

Danny had promised her his methods of handling “shit that happens” as he put it wouldn’t affect her or the boys.

 _Bullshit_ , she thought as she watched her husband self destruct.

She understood that Jamie had meant well, and sure Danny enjoyed drinking as much as the next Reagan, and maybe he had needed a little bit of a drink in the early days, but she was starting to get concerned when Danny came home pig drunk the day he testified. Could she blame him for that though?

Yes, she thought when his brother turned up the middle of the next day to return his keys and car, looking visibly troubled by something no doubt Danny related, even though he denied it. 

Still, Linda didn’t know what to do, or how to help her husband.

But when she was doing laundry one Sunday and found that one of Danny’s shirts smelled like cigarette smoke, enough was enough.

“Hey honey, have you seen the-“ When her husband leaned into the laundry room, she turned around and smacked him. He reeled back in shock. “What-“ She threw his smoky shirt at him and turned back to what she was doing. 

He stood in the doorway for a long time before finally speaking.

“Are you going to roast me or aren’t you?”

“What do you want me to say, Danny? You’re a grown man, you can make your own decisions.”

“So why the slap, then?”

She turned to face him. He always looked exhausted these days.

“Because you come home three sheets to the wind on a Tuesday-“

“Oh come on-“

“Yes, you testified that day, but then your brother shows up with your keys and car the next day which, I’m a detective’s wife so let’s deduce this, means he had to take them from you, so you were going to do something stupid like drive when you were too drunk to remember your own name! And now you’ve picked up a tobacco habit.” Her husband at least had the decency to look a little penitent. “And you still expect me to believe you’re ‘handling it’?”

His face hardened and he turned and walked away.

“Danny!” Linda followed him and when he ignored her, grabbed his arm to turn him around. He flinched and artfully escaped her grasp, turning around to face her.

“I am handling it.”

Linda laughed humorlessly. “Fine. But if one of the boys comes to me and asks me why their father smells like smoke all the time now, or anything like that, you and I are gonna have an issue, got it?” Danny gave her a thin lipped smile and turned again to leave. Quieter, Linda continued, “And before you start passively trying to die again, please think about how many people you’d take with you.”

She didn’t have to see his face to know she’d struck a nerve.

********

When Jamie called about showing up early to help cook for Sunday dinner, Frank could guess that something was up. His youngest son’s troubled expression confirmed that suspicion.

Jamie wasted no time in cutting to the chase, putting the roast in the fridge before turning to his father.

“Have you talked to Danny recently?”

Frank shook his head slowly. “Meaningfully? Not since he was in the hospital. I’ve called him many times, but he never picks up or returns them. And we’ve all seen the façade he puts on at dinner.”

Jamie nodded. “I’m really worried about him.”

“Me too.”

The beat cop fidgeted. “It’s just...something he said this week...you heard he testified this past Tuesday?”

“Erin may have mentioned it.”

“Well...he and I went out for a drink after-“

“You two have been doing that a lot lately.”

Again, Jamie nodded sheepishly. “I’m realizing that maybe I haven’t been doing him any favors...but he got really drunk. I don’t really blame him for that, I mean positions reversed, I would have too, but...”

Frank waited patiently for his son to collect himself. Whatever had transpired between his sons had clearly rattled the younger.

“But?” Frank prompted gently.

Jamie took a deep breath. “But then when we going to leave, he’s staggering a bit and is _insisting_ that he’s fine to drive. So I swiped his keys-“

“Dare I ask where you learned how to do that?”

The building tension relaxed and Jamie smiled. “I’m a beat cop, Dad, I know how to rob people.”

Frank smiled at that. “I’m glad you took his keys.”

“Me too, but he got really mad at me, and I was trying to convince him to just take a cab, he was gonna get himself killed otherwise...and he said he didn’t care.”

Frank’s blood turned to ice. “Didn’t care about what?” he asked to clarify.

“If he got killed. He said he wouldn’t care if he died. And then he said sure, he’d take the cab so he wouldn’t hit anyone but maybe he’d-” He stopped and took a breath. “Maybe he’s get lucky and catch a stray bullet on the ride home.” His voice choked at the end.

“That...is concerning.”

Jamie nodded, searching his father’s face for any sort of semblance on how to proceed. Frank had honestly no idea.

“And how did you respond?”

Jamie shrugged. “I was too shocked he would say something like that to say anything back. He never talks like that! Then he just got into a cab and left... I haven’t talked to him since...should we bring this up with Linda?”

Frank sighed. “I...don’t know. She’s called me a few times, said that he continues to vehemently reject any attempt at help that she offers him.”

“Vehemently.”

“Mmhmmm.”

“And Renzulli was telling me that he heard from Sergeant Gormley that Danny’s been beating up a lot on perps. He’s been hit with two complaints so far in the last month alone.”

The two were silent for a long moment.

“I don’t think Grandpa was right, Dad. I don’t think we should’ve left Danny to his own devices on this.”

“I think you may be right...let’s see how he is today, and then we can look at how to proceed further.”

Jamie nodded in agreement.

********

Danny looked sick. That was the first thing Frank noticed when his son walked in the door.

“Hey pop.” There was the mask. Frank wished to God for guidance on how to proceed.

“Good to see you, Danny.”

“You too.”

Linda came in next, looking equally as tired as her husband. She gave her father-in-law a weak smile before going to join Jamie in the kitchen. The commissioner gave her sons the biggest hug he could manage. He doubted they had any information on what was going on with their parents, but they weren’t stupid. It was always hard when one’s parents had difficulty.

Henry quickly came and ushered the two out to the back room to show them the newest whatever it was he’d been working on. Frank followed his eldest son into the family room.

It appeared as though Danny quickly recognized himself as cornered and rolled his eyes in defeat.

“Something you needed?”

“How are you doing, Danny?”

His son frowned. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

“So you’ve made clear on multiple occasions. But humor your concerned father?”

Danny sighed. “I’m fine, alright?”

“Is that why you look so sick?”

The detective threw his coat on a chair. “What do you want? I was fine, okay? Doing great. And then I testified and…Give me a week, I’ll be fine again.”

It disturbed Frank to see how well his son could lie. “Your siblings are concerned about you, too.”

“They’re worrywarts.”

He was the police commissioner, he had an entire army at his command, and he could do nothing but stare at his son, how his clothes hung loosely off his frame, how his skin seemed permanently stained purple under his eyes, how it had lost some of its color just in general, the the stubble on his face left unshaved…

“I think some of their worry is well founded.” Danny’s eyes hardened, but he remained silent, so Frank continued. “Jamie…expressed concerned about something you said-“

“Are you shitting me?” Danny looked pissed. “I was drunk off my ass that night and pissed cuz I lost-or he stole!-my keys. Kid’s too sensitive.”

Frank braced himself. “What you said was concerning, Danny.”

His son stared at him briefly before grabbing his coat off the chair. “I don’t need to listen to this,” and he walked towards the door.

“Daniel!”

That stopped him, but only for a moment. “What? You all are making something out of nothing, and I’m sick of it!”

“What happened to you was not nothing, Danny,” Frank answered softly. His son responded with a glare.

“Not in front of my sons,” he hissed and opened the door. “I’m going for a walk.” And he slammed it behind him.

Frank let out the breath he’d been holding, a feeling of defeat washing over him. He felt well and truly powerless.

The rest of his family, sans daughter and niece, was crowded in the dining room.

“Is my dad okay?” Frank got to watch his daughter-in-law’s heart break at the question from his youngest grandson.

“You’re Dad’s struggling a little bit right now, Sean, but he will be okay.”

“You promise?” That was Jack. Linda looked like she wanted to cry. 

“I promise.” What else could he say? He prayed he could keep it.

The boys nodded slowly, turning back to their grandfather and mother.

“Where’d he go?” Jamie piped up.

“For a walk,” Frank answered, sitting down heavily. 

“Hey guys!” Erin and Nicky, then. Frank rose to give his daughter a hug, which she eagerly returned.

“Hey, I saw Danny walking down the street-“ Jamie was up and out of his chair, coat in hand, with a quick kiss to Erin’s cheek and a ruffle to Nicky’s hair, and he was out the door. Both women stared after him, confused. I _s everything okay?_ Erin mouthed to her father. Frank shook his head. What else could he do? Nothing, absolutely nothing, felt okay in that moment.

It was concerning that neither Danny nor Jamie had returned by the time dinner was ready. As they opted to say grace and begin without them, much to the dismay and confusion of the three youngest Reagans, Frank glared at the phone on the counter in the kitchen.

 _Don’t you dare ring,_ he thought, prayed. _Don’t you dare bring me bad news._

 _I can’t do this again,_ he thought as he put on a brave smile and made jokes with his father for they boys, saying something political to get Nicky into the mix. Neither Linda nor Erin said much.

*******

 _It’s freezing out here,_ Jamie thought as he walked down the street in search of his brother. He stuffed he hands in his coat pockets and walked a little faster.

He found Danny leaning against a tree a couple blocks over, staring at nothing, a cigarette between his fingers.

 _That’s new._ He elected not to mention it, sidling up to his brother instead.

“How’re you doing?”

“The next person who asks me that is gonna get clocked in the jaw.”

Jamie nodded slowly. “That’s fair.”

Danny took a drag. “What, you’re not gonna ask me why I started smoking?”

“Wasn’t planning on it, no.”

“Hm.” He finished the first and dug around in his pocket for a second. “Want one?”

“Nah thanks.”

“Good.” He lit it and exhaled a lungful of smoke. “Was gonna smack ya upside the head if you agreed.”

“So I can’t, but you can?” Jamie teased.

“Pretty much, yeah.” He took another lungful and exhaled with a cough and a grimace. “Ugh gross.”

Jamie eyed his brother. “If it’s gross, why you doing it?”

“Thought you weren’t gonna ask me that.”

“Danny!”

Danny gave him an amused smile. “Honestly? Calms me down... Something to do...I don’t know.” He tapped the ash off the end of it. “Hey look...I’m sorry I spooked ya earlier, I was just...feeling shitty.”

“I don’t blame you, Danny...I was worried about you. You’re my brother, I love you.”

“Sure.”

Jamie paused a moment. “...You doubt that?”

“Reading into it again.”

Jamie wasn’t so sure. “Well, I do you know.”

“You big ball of cheese.” Danny ruffled his hair. “Love you too, baby brother.”

Jamie made a face and ducked out from under his brother’s hand. “Wanna go back or keep walking.”

“Eh, I’ll keep walking. The wife’s gonna chew me out for smelling like smoke around the boys. Gotta air out a bit.”

Jamie snorted. The two walked in companionable silence.

*******

Frank was brooding. He wasn’t ashamed to admit that, as much as his father liked to tease him. The eldest of the family did not tease him that night, however. The police commissioner had every reason to brood.

It had been nearly dark and well past dessert by the time Danny and Jamie had returned. His eldest son had looked a little better, even if he had refused to acknowledge his father before leaving with his wife and sons. Jamie looked as though he had caught some of Danny’s perpetual exhaustion.

Frank and Henry were the only ones left in the house, everyone else pledging an early night and leaving quickly.

Frank swirled his whiskey in his glass as his father sat down heavily in the chair across from him.

“It certainly felt enough like a morgue in here today.”

Frank nodded slowly, draining his whiskey in one long swallow.“I can honestly say I have no idea what to do, Pop.”

“About.”

“What do you mean ‘about’? About Danny!”

“What about him? Seemed to me like he only got upset cuz you pressed him.”

Frank loved his father, but sometimes he could be a little dense. “He got upset because Jamie confided in me that Danny had been talking about ending his life one night when he was drunk.”

The stoic PC jumped at the loud crash that emanated from his father’s falling glass.

“ _What?!_ ” The eldest Reagan’s eyes were wide with plain fear. “And you let him walk out that door!”

“Jamie spent a good few hours with him. If he thought Danny’s life was imminently in danger, he wouldn’t have let him leave.”

The old man still looked visibly upset. “What exactly did he say that made Jamie fear for his life, Francis?”

“He was three sheets to the wind and trying to drive, so Jamie stole his keys and reminded him that he could get himself killed-“

“Or someone else,” Henry growled. Frank gave him a look and continued.

“At which point Danny got very angry and said that he wouldn’t care if he died, that maybe he’d ‘get lucky’ and catch a stray bullet on the way home.”

Henry let out a deep sigh of relief. “Don’t scare me like that, Francis!”

Frank stared at his father. “...what?”

“You made me believe my grandson was going to kill himself! That’s just something someone would say drunk and angry after a terrible day! Besides, he’s always been a little cavalier-“

“No Pop.” The old man stopped and stared at his son. Frank held firm. “That is not something you just say when you’re angry and drunk, I don’t care how bad of a day you’ve had. And especially not something _my son_ would ever say if he didn’t mean it. It’s true that Danny has been cavalier with his life since he came back from Iraq but before he was raped he’d never talked like that!”

Frank sniffed and rubbed his eyes. Henry stayed silent.

“The worse part is,” Frank continued quietly, “That I have no idea how to help my boy. He desperately needs it, but I don’t know what to do.”

For all the wisdom he held, in that moment Henry had none to give.

Frank shook his head. “I can’t lose another son, Pop. Especially not like this.”

Henry frowned at the broken glass on the floor and rubbed the center of his chest. “...Neither can I, Francis.” 

*******

Jackie was nervous. She and Danny flew through the streets of Brooklyn, sirens blazing. While this wouldn’t be the first arrest they’d made since Danny’s incident (as she and the entire department had taken to calling the incident after he’d snapped at a beat cop for calling it ‘the accident’ and God forbid they call it by name) it would definitely be the most dangerous. A suspect wanted in several armed robberies. Likely still carrying those arms. Placed in the direct line of fire of a violent suspect, she couldn’t help but wonder how Danny would react.

She wasn’t blind to how the incident had affected her partner. He was more standoffish than he had been previously, tenser, quieter even, no that’s not right. He was still plenty loud...not reserved...more down to business perhaps. With less time for the funny quips that had been her partner’s signature thing.

She was a profiler, it was obvious he didn’t sleep. Or eat. Instead he drank, and recently smoked quite a bit (and did not appreciate the generic “you know those’ll kill you right?” jokes, which she has learned the hard way). That was another thing. He was...meaner, you could say. He’d always yelled, but he’d always been quick to follow a shout with normal words when it came to his partner. No longer. 

The car screeched to a halt and in a typical Danny fashion, he was off like a shot, leaving Jackie to quickly call it in and race after him, yelling for him to wait.

(He’d told her she needn’t feel any guilt about what had happened to him, that it was on him. He’d gone in alone. She couldn’t help but wonder if she had only run a little faster.)

And run faster she did. Down an alley or two, through one warehouse and into another one, why did the perps Danny chased always pick ridiculous routes? They could never just run down the main road, could they?

She heard Danny yell “freeze!” and a scuffled ensued. She raced towards the noise. Through a doorway and there, down a flight of stairs was Danny managing to trip the perp he’d just caught to bring him down for an easy collar. 

Except he must have miscalculated ever so slightly and the perp grabbed onto his shirt, dragging the detective down with him. They fell in such a way that Danny ended up falling hard on his back with the perp half atop him.

In the mere seconds it took for Jackie to enter the doorway and draw her weapon, Danny had gone from standing to the ground, and she saw a flash of raw fear in his eyes as he froze solid.

“Police! Don’t move!”

Danny unfroze and knocked the perp off of him, quickly cuffing him and leaning up, knees still digging into the perp’s back.

Jackie read the bastard his Miranda rights as they transported him back to where they’d started. Danny stayed silent, chest still heaving. She doubted it was completely from exertion. 

They handed the perp off to a couple of cops who’d responded to Jackie’s call. She watched as two other cops bundled the man into the back of a squad car and drove off with him. When she turned to evaluate her partner, she found he was no longer standing beside her. Instead he stood a few paces behind her, facing away, bent over with his hands on his knees.

“Danny, you okay?” When she got closer, she could hear the telltale wheezing of a panic attack. “Hey hey hey, sit down. Here, sit down.” She carefully touched his shoulder and when he didn’t recoil, she guided him to sit on the curb. Rarely one to be guided, Danny let her, eyes wide with panic.

“I can’t breathe,” he gasped.

“I promise you you can.” She sat next to him, a hand on his shoulder to keep him from folding in on himself, the other rubbing his chest. 

“I can’t breathe,” he said again, voice barely audible as he tried to gasp for air.

“I get these all the time, I promise you you can breathe, it just feels like you can’t. Just try and take a deep breath, it’s okay.”

He did, drawing in a horrible rattling breath. They always sounded worse than they were, Jackie knew from experience. “There you go, keep going. Easy.”

After a few more he was able to take a proper breath and pulled away from her, leaning forward and resting his head in his hands.

“You’re okay,” she said soothingly.

“Yeah,” he replied hoarsely. 

Jackie smiled a little. “You don’t need to be embarrassed. I wasn’t lying, I get em all the time. You ever had one before?”

“A few.”

Jackie nodded. “Kinda scary when they just creep up on you, right?” Danny snorted. “Worst one I ever had was when I woke up from surgery, I’m sitting there flailing and rasping “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” and the anesthesiologist comes running over of course and looks at all my monitors and goes ‘Jackie honey your oxygen levels are at 100%, you can breathe just fine.’”

Danny laughed a little. Jackie smiled and continued. “That tidbit helped me handle em after that, knowing that even if it felt like I couldn’t breathe, I actually could.”

“I bet...Never seen you have one.”

Jackie grinned. “I’ve gotten pretty good at reeling em in in public. Still, I’ve had my fair share.”

Danny stared at the concrete in front of him and rubbed his eyes before standing up.

“C’mon, let’s hurry back before those other two get credit for our collar.”

About 2/3 of the way back, Danny muttered a quiet ‘thank you’. Jackie smiled. 

“No problem, Reagan.”

*******

He hadn’t slept a goddamn wink. The whole fucking night, he would close his eyes and immediately be plunged right back into that stupid warehouse, jerking back awake shortly after that.

Linda tried to coax a bagel and some coffee into him the next morning when he half fell down the stairs. The bagel was a no, he decided as soon as he looked at it, but give him all the coffee if he was ever gonna make it through this twelve hour shift.

Apparently his stomach had other ideas, because he took three sips and threw it right back up.

“Maybe you should call in sick,” his lovely wife suggested, warily eyeing the purple skin under his eyes contrasting starkly with the rest of his pale face.

“And do what?” he asked roughly. He hated doing nothing these days.

She let it go, wishing him a good day (ha) and kissing his cheek.

He gave her a poor attempt at a smile and left, not responding to her call of “drive safe!”

“You should’ve stayed home today,” was the first thing Gormley said as soon as Danny walked in.

“Gee, thanks, boss.”

“I’m serious, Reagan. You’re sick.”

“I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep.”

His boss didn’t seem to believe him, but let him be with a firm warning that if anybody else called in with the same symptoms there would be hell to pay. 

His day seemed to get exponentially worse after that. His cases were stone cold. Dead end after dead end, frustrating witnesses who wouldn’t talk, and a partner who seemed to have decided that he was her pet project for the day. On the way back from interviewing a witness, Jackie (who had gotten immeasurably more concerned when Danny had let her drive) stopped at a diner and came out a few minutes later with a cup of tea.

“It’s camomile, good for when you’re sick,” she told him, clearly pleased with herself. Danny humored her and took it, ignoring the horrible anxious and sick feeling in his throat. Maybe he was sick, he groused as he threw up the (in his opinion) tasteless liquid on the side of the road a few minutes later. Jackie frowned at him from the driver’s seat.

“Rough night?” she guessed and Danny dragged himself back into the car and shut the door. He threw her a look and didn’t answer. His shift had started at 7. It was only noon.

“Maybe just hit me over the head instead,” he said, back at the precinct upon being asked if he wanted another crack at the suspect in the box who had quite literally not said a word since going in three hours earlier.

“Go home, Reagan,” Gormley told him again when he caught Danny reading a (cold) case file with his head pillowed on his forearm.

“ ‘M fine, boss,” he mumbled.

“No, you’re not.”

Danny ignored him and went to take another crack at the witness.

“Look,” he said after another half hour of nothing, “You’re probably sick of being here, I know I’m sick of being here, why don’t we help each other out?” The suspect said nothing, didn’t even acknowledge that he’d heard him. Something in Danny cracked. He grabbed the front of the man’s shirt and dragged him across the table. “FUCKING SAY SOMETHING!” And threw him across the room.

The next thing he knew, he was out in the hall being slammed against the wall. As soon as his back made contact with the wall, he threw his hands up in a defensive position, awaiting the attack he knew was coming…

Except none came. Just Gormley, Jackie, and some other guy taking a step back to give him some space while somebody else when to clean up his suspect.

Shit, fuck…he hadn’t had a reaction that bad since he came back from Iraq.He brought his hands to his face and rubbed his eyes.

“…Sorry guys, I didn’t-”

Gormley had had enough. “Give this one and me a second here,” he growled to Jackie.

“Gormley-“

“I said leave.”

She gave Danny a sympathetic look and went back over to her desk.

Gormley stabbed his finger in the center of Danny’s chest. “Alright, listen here, buddy. I don’t give a damn how bad you’re feeling, you do _not_ get to beat up on suspects.”

“I said I’m-“

“This’ll be the fifth complaint against you in three months and while I feel for you there are some things I will not let slide, so until you man up and _deal_ with what happened to you and bring me a signed letter from a decent shrink I do not want to see you in this office, got it?” Danny stared uncomprehendingly at his boss. Gormley sighed. “I’m not firing you, Danny, but I will not sit by and watch you spiral any longer. Just go schedule another appointment with the department shrink, spill your guts, and you can come back, ok? Now get outta here.” His reassurance seemed to fall on deaf ears.

“Wait, boss please, I gotta work, I can barely pay my kids’ tuition as it is, I can’t-“

“Now, Reagan.”

“I know I screwed up, just-“

“Danny. Now.”

Danny numbly grabbed his coat and keys, hands shaking, and left, ignoring Jackie’s questioning stare. And everybody else’s.

*******

“Danny,” Linda was surprised. “You’re home early!” Danny walked straight to the fridge. Just a beer and a cigarette and then maybe he could process this day. “Danny?” Linda sounded concerned now. It seemed like Danny was floating above his body, watching everything unfold. “Danny!” There was a touch of hysteria seeping into her voice.

He was almost at the door when she grabbed his arm and spun him around. “What happened!”

He looked at her and passively said, “I got fired.”

His wife stared at him. “…What?” Her voice was very small. Danny hated himself.

“I said I got fired.” It was at that moment that he spotted his sons sitting at the table, staring with their mouths gaping like fish. The same children he could no longer support, in any sense of the word. It was a strange feeling for someone already numb to feel number. He looked back to his wife. “I’m sorry.” And he walked out the backdoor. _Maybe after a few I’ll be able to think._

*******

Frank Reagan was the Police Commissioner of the largest city in the United States. Precious little surprised him after so many years on the job. Expect everything, he always said. Be prepared.

What he did not expect, and was in no way prepared for, was a frantic call from Linda.

“It’s Danny! Danny’s gone, he’s just gone!”

“Linda, Linda, slow down dear. What do you mean he’s gone?” He was the Commissioner. He could keep a straight face and a calm voice under any situation. Even as his heart tried to beat out of his chest.

“He came home early from work, said he’d been fired-“ Fired? Oh no. “He was barely talking, he wouldn’t listen to me, he just sat on the back step chain-smoking. I left to chase the boys upstairs, and when I came back _he was just gone_ , I looked everywhere for him! I tried calling him but he left his phone on the step!” Her voice bled raw panic. Frank felt it too.

“Alright, keep an eye out for him, I’ll be right there.”

*******

It had taken all together too long to get to Staten Island. He had glared at his phone the whole way there.

_Don’t you dare ring. Don’t you dare ring and tell me my son is dead._

Somewhere gridlocked, even with the lights on, on Interstate 287 Frank picked up the thing and dialed Danny’s number on a hope. Nothing. As soon as he hit voicemail he called Jamie.

“Hey, Pop, what’s going on?” He heard Renzulli abruptly stop hounding him in the background.

“Nothing, Jamie, I just…wanted to give you a heads up. Danny’s…gone missing again.”

“What do you mean he’s gone missing?!”

Frank took a deep breath. “I mean…Linda called and told me he was fired from his job today, came home and disappeared shortly thereafter.”

“Oh my God.” He could hear Jamie breathing quickly and Renzulli’s concerned ‘Kid-‘ in the background. “Dad, what if-“

“None of that. We’re not talking what ifs. I just wanted you to keep an eye out for him. Linda couldn’t find him in the neighborhood, maybe he hitched a ride over to Brooklyn, wandered over there. You know where we found him the one time-“

“Yeah.” Jamie let out a shaky breath. “Yeah I remember. I’ll…I’ll go look. Want me to call Erin? Or Jackie?”

“Erin yes, she heard his testimony, she might have some insight on where he might’ve wandered to. Not Jackie. Let’s keep this between the family until we know more.”

“Okay…okay. Call me as soon as you know. I’ll send you what Erin says.”

“Okay, son. I love you.”

“Love you too, Pop.”

Frank hung up and continued to glare at his phone as the island slowly inched closer.

He practically leaped out of the car as soon as he pulled up to his son’s house. His daughter-in-law was in the kitchen, eyes firmly fixed on the shape of his son, oh thank God his son, kicking around a stick out back.

“Linda.”

She jumped, but then instantly relaxed as she recognized Frank’s voice. “Oh thank God you’re here. I was calling neighbors, friends, to ask if they’d seen him, nobody had and he just reappears! Said he just went for a walk around the block, but that can’t possibly be true because I would’ve found him and-“ She took a deep breath. “I don’t think it’s ever been this bad before. He’s not…”

“It’s okay. Let me talk to him.” He handed her his phone, “Jamie or Erin might call” and walked out the door.

His ever so observant son didn’t seem to realize he was there. Frank made sure to make a lot of noise as he approached him.

“I heard you had a rough day,” he began carefully. Danny didn’t act as though he’d heard him. “You spooked Linda, disappearing like that.”

“Hm…” Frank waited patiently. “Sorry, I just…went for a walk. She called you?”

“She was concerned.”

“Why was she concerned?” 

Frank was also concerned. “Well…she said you’d lost your job, that you were upset, and she got worried when you went for a walk and she couldn’t find you. I was concerned too.”

“Oh…sorry.” He kicked at the stick and brought his cigarette to his lips. Frank kicked himself for missing such an obvious sign of his son’s struggle.

“It’s okay,” he answered. “You came back. That’s what’s important.”

“Mm.” He exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Don’t you wanna know what I did to get thrown out?” Frank said nothing. letting Danny say what he wanted. “I roughed up one witness too many, so Sarge told me to get the hell out and that was that.”

“I’m sorry that happened today,” Frank said measuredly, watching his son’s reaction.

Danny snorted. “Me too. Shit!” He recoiled as his cigarette burned down to his fingers. He shook out his hand and kept kicking the stick. “I had it coming, though. It’s not like I could do my job anyway.”

“What do you mean by that, Danny?” Frank’s hands were clenched into fists in his coat pockets. 

“You know I chased down that perp last week? I tripped him, but he dragged me down too. And I just froze. I fucking froze…just like I did in that warehouse!” Frank held his breath. Danny looked pained. “Did you know that? That I didn’t do anything? Nothing! As they…” He broke off, his voice trembling. “And who’s to say, that if Jackie didn’t get there and snap me out of it that it wouldn’t have happened again? And I wouldn’t have done anything!” He kicked the stick hard, watching it fly across the yard. Frank watched it too before speaking.

“Couldn’t have done anything.”

Danny gave him an incredulous look. “What?”

“It’s a well documented response to a life threatening situation. It’s not actually ‘fight or flight’, it’s fight, flight, or freeze. You couldn’t have done anything, Danny.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“That’s not bullshit, that’s fact. And you’d agree with me if it had happened to anyone else but you.”

Danny didn’t bother to disagree with him there, shaking his head as he stared at the ground.

“In any case, because of that shit I can’t do my damn job anymore, which is great cuz I got thrown out. And it gets even better cuz I gotta pay more of the boys’ tuition next week and _there is no way in hell_ I can do that now! I could barely do it with a job, and now…” He stared at his house. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? I can’t support my family, the boys have caught on to how fucked up I am, Linda’s at the end of her rope with me, I can barely make it through a day, I’m worthless.” He kicked at the grass, smiling miserably. “I got a life insurance policy, you know I’m quite literally worth more dead than alive.” Just like Jamie had been, Frank felt frozen, staring at his son in horror. He had said that so casually…

Frank Reagan did not make a habit out of hitting his children. Yes, he’d spanked them all on multiple occasions, but he never ever truly _hit_ them. But for that, he backhanded Danny hard enough to knock him down.

*******

One minute he’d been standing, and the next he was staring at the sky, right cheek on fire. He couldn’t find it within himself to feel sorry for what he’d said, do forgive him, he was too busy feeling like he was standing there dying.

Then he was practically _lifted_ off the ground and crushed to his father’s chest.

“Daniel Fitzgerald Reagan, don’t you ever say that to me again, don’t you ever even think it!” Everything be damned, his father was crying, Danny noted. He felt disconnected from himself. He hated that. He also noted that, held tight in his father’s arms, something within him broke the rest of the way.

What of it if, face buried in his father’s shoulder, he cried like a tiny child, months worth of buried emotions suddenly surfacing all at once and refusing to be ignored any longer. Really, who could process all that at once, he would rationalize it to himself later in an attempt to calm his embarrassment.

But in that moment he felt like a fire hydrant being flushed out. Everything, everything he’d worked so hard to tamp down and forget was bombarding him and a feeling of hopelessness, that this was never _ever_ going to stop, he would never _ever_ stop feeling like he was drowning, was crushing him and he just couldn’t do it.

“God, I wish that perp had killed me,” he sobbed, the words mostly hidden in his father’s coat. The older man heard them nonetheless, and clutched Danny all the harder.

He had no idea how long it took for him to cry himself out, only that when he did he could do nothing more than lean against his father like a limp rag doll, completely and utterly spent.

Frank continued to hold him tight, petting his hair and murmuring words that Danny didn’t bother to try and understand. For the first time in a long time, he let himself be comforted. It was nice, he supposed.

He didn’t remember walking to the step his father sat him down on. The man sat beside him, giving him some space. Danny scrubbed at his face.

“Don’t mind me, just a thirty something guy crying like a baby, fuck me…”

“Enough Danny,” Frank scoffed. “You’re too hard on yourself.” Danny didn’t answer, so he continued. “I don’t know what I can do about your job, but don’t worry about your boys’ tuition okay? Or anything like that. That’s what I’m here for, to support my children when they need it. Hey, look at me.” When Danny did, Frank continued, “It’s certainly not worth you dying over, you understand?” Danny nodded. “I can’t lose another kid. Jamie and Erin, they can’t lose another brother. And Pop...if you kill yourself, you’ll kill him too.”

Danny felt like shit. “‘M sorry, Dad, I wasn’t gonna-“

Frank cut him off. “I know. Just...you’ve been too cavalier with your life, in words and actions. We’re all worried about you. And we love you.”

“Gee, Dad, haven’t I cried enough yet today?”

Frank smiled thinly. “Maybe not.” The two sat in silence for a long while. Danny lit up another cigarette. Frank joined him with a cigar. “Did you mean it, Danny?”

Danny didn’t look at him. “Mean what?”

“Do you really wish that perp had killed you?”

“No.”

He was lying. Goddammit he was lying. The two finished their tobacco in silence. Frank didn’t bother to hide the tears intermittently dripping down his cheeks. 

*******

Eventually Frank coaxed a Danny reluctant to face his wife up and into the house. Upon entering, the eldest Reagan brother was accosted by the youngest, who had apparently shown up at some point. Jamie, still in his uniform but missing his weapons belt, flung his arms around his brother and held on tight.

“Danny! Thank God, I was so worried! Renzulli let me go as soon as Dad called, I thought they were gonna call me the whole ride over here and tell me you were dead, I can’t do that again!” He sounded on the verge of tears himself. Danny patted his younger brother’s back half heartedly.

“I’m sorry kid, I just…I’m tired, I’m gonna go say goodnight to the boys and go to bed.” He extracted himself from his brother’s arms and took the stairs two at a time. Nobody commented that it was only 7 at night.

Jamie watched his brother go before turning to his father. “Is he okay??”

Frank shook his head. “Not really, but…I don’t think he’s in imminent danger tonight.” Jamie and Linda both let out a sigh of relief.

“Oh, good news though,” Linda started. “Danny didn’t really lose his job.”

“Yeah,” Jamie continued. “I told Renzulli briefly what happened, he let me go and then called Sergeant Gormley to ask what happened, then called me cuz Sarge told him he didn’t fire Danny, only kicked him out until he got some professional help, Danny musta misunderstood him.”

“Thank God,” Frank said, rubbing his eyes. “We can talk to Danny about it in the morning.”

Jamie looked between his father and his brother’s wife. “If…if you don’t mind, Linda, I can sleep on the couch so…” He didn’t finish the thought. He didn’t need to.

Linda nodded quickly. “Of course. I’ll go grab you a sheet.” Her voice broke on the last word and she quickly disappeared up the stairs. Jamie, too, looked on the verge of tears. Frank could relate. He hadn’t felt this awful since he got the call that told him his second born son was dead.

“Dad?” Frank looked at his youngest. Jamie stared at him in a way that reminded Frank of a small child woken up from a nightmare. “Was Danny really gonna…” He swallowed. “Gonna…”

“No,” Frank said quickly, forcefully, as if the harder he said it them more true it would be. “No he…” He broke off, mouth drawn in a tight line.

“Tell me the truth, Dad.” Gone was the child, left in its place was an impassive cop. He wanted to strangle the men who had raped Danny, tear them apart, end them for what they had done to his son, who had already suffered so much, and to his family, who had already lost so many people. He wanted to destroy the men who put that look on his boy’s face and these words in his mouth.

“He was thinking about it.” Jamie choked as Frank said the words. “I don’t know if he would’ve done it or not, but he was in a bad enough place that he was thinking about it.”

“Oh God…” Jamie buried his head in his hands. Frank hugged him.

“We got to him, Jamie. He’s okay. He’s gonna be okay.” Jamie nodded, accepting his father’s comfort without question. Frank tried to believe it himself. 

Jamie pulled away, sniffing. “I should…I should call Erin…”

Frank nodded.

Linda came back with the sheet shortly after Jamie stepped out.

“Danny’s sleeping.” She laid the sheets out on the couch for Jamie.

“Good.”

“Frank.”

“Yes dear?”

“Take Danny’s off duty weapon.”

Frank was glad he hadn’t had to broach that subject himself. He nodded slowly in agreement.

One of the weapons wasn’t in the gun safe in the closet. Frank could do nothing but stare with rising dread the longer his daughter-in-law frantically searched for the missing piece. She stopped suddenly, staring at Danny’s coat, which he had tossed over the back of the chair. She gingerly reached int the left pocket. From it, she pulled the missing gun. She practically shoved it at her father in law. Frank felt sick, sicker than he already was. Hadn’t been considering it indeed. 

“I don’t know when he had time to grab that…” Linda whispered, hardly ignorant of what it signified.

“How much did you hear?” Frank said after a while.

“A lot.” She was close to crying again. “I missed whatever he said to you to make you slap him. I don’t want to know what he said, considering the trend in your conversation before that. Just...just tell me. Am I gonna lose my husband over this?”

“Not if I can help it. And I can. My son will not die by suicide.”

“Just get those guns out of my house.”

Frank nodded. “I’ll say goodbye to Jamie and then I’ll get out of your hair. Do not hesitate to call. For any reason.”

“Thank you Frank.” Linda sounded far away. Frank was glad Jamie was staying.

*******

Frank was exhausted by the time he got home, both physically and mentally. His eldest’s son’s off duty weapon was heavy in his pocket.

“Francis!”

“Hey, Pop.”

His father practically came running out of the living room. “Erin just called. Is Danny okay?”

Frank still hadn’t figured out how to answer that question. “For now. Jamie’s camped out on their couch for the night. I told Linda to call me if anything changes.”

Henry sighed. “How bad was it, Francis?”

“Bad.” He went to retrieve a glass of whiskey. “It’s a bit of a long story.”

“I’ve got time. Hit me.”

“Danny was suspended from the force today.”

“Suspended?” The old man sounded incredulous. “What for?”

“Misconduct. He roughed up one witness too many and I guess his C.O. had had enough of him taking out his own emotions on other people so he suspended him until he got professional help and could prove it.”

Henry scoffed. “So put him on modified duty, a man’s gotta work! Suspend him…”

“Can’t say I disagree with his C.O. after what went down tonight.” He swallowed to large a gulp of whiskey. His father stared at him, waiting for him to go on. “Danny misunderstood Sergeant Gormley. He went home to Linda saying he’d been fired, then promptly pulled one of his disappearing acts.”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“Me neither. I went over there when I heard, by the time I got there he’d come back, but he was just pacing around their backyard chain-smoking. Went up to talk to him…” He took another drink. “He started mouthing off about how he can’t do his job anymore, saying he was worth more dead than alive and that he wished the perps had killed him!” His voice had risen quite a bit, he realized at the end of his sentence. His father sat down.

“…Danny said that?”

Frank nodded. “Linda…gave me his off duty weapons for the time being.”

“So he was serious about...”

“He had one of ‘em on him when he went walking off.”

“Please tell me it was for protection.”

Frank didn’t bother to answer that and Henry was quiet for a long moment after.

“So what is the next step in this situation?”

Frank shrugged. “See how he is tomorrow morning. Get him the professional help. One day at a time.”

“One day at a time.”

Neither man bothered to try and sleep that night.

*******

Danny woke up feeling like he’d been hit by a bus. He peeled himself off the bed (he’d apparently fallen asleep on top the covers in the clothes he’d worn the previous day). He reeked of cigarette smoke. Damn. He was gonna get skinned for this one.

It was only after he’d pulled on a clean t-shirt and sweat pants and padded down the hall did he realized that today was not in fact his day off. Cue a flash of panic because it was nearly 9 and his shift started at 7 before it hit him that he no longer had a job, at which point everything else that had happened the previous evening surfaced as well. It took a lot of effort to continue down the stairs instead of turning around and going right back to bed. 

He nearly jumped out of his skin when he hit the bottom of the stairs and saw an unidentified male figure asleep on the couch. His brother, he realized after a split second.

“Danny.”

His wife. Fuck, he’d been hoping to avoid the aftermath of the stunt he’d pulled the night before for a little bit longer. He walked the rest of the way into the kitchen. Linda was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. It was obvious she hadn’t slept. Neither had his brother, he could guess, for most of the night, which would be why he was in there sleeping now.

“Linda, I-“

“Sit down.”

He sat. 

His wife picked up a notepad she had lying next to her. Oh boy. “So I called around this morning and found a couple of places you could go.”

“Places?” 

“Therapists. Some of the veterans organizations in the area rate these one highly for treating PTSD which, don’t give me that look, you’ve been suffering from since you got back from Iraq and that you’ve suffered from again for the past three months.” 

Danny sighed heavily. “Linda, I know I screwed up last night, but-“

“But? When I looked out back and couldn’t find you, I thought the next time I’d see you would be when I went down to the medical examiner to identify your body. And I don’t even want to know what you said to your father last night. You should put some ice on that cheek by the way.”

Danny prodded at his cheekbone, wincing. That hit had been solid.

“So don’t even try to tell me you don’t need help, because you do. And if you care anything about your family, you’ll get it.” She took a drink of coffee. “Besides, don’t you want your job back?”

Danny stared at her. “My job?”

“Yeah, you didn’t actually lose it. The Sarge just suspended you until you got professional help, or so he told Renzulli who told Jamie.”

Danny leaned his head in his hands, relief briefly warming the numbness in his chest.

“He didn’t fire me.”

“No he didn’t.”

He exhaled long. “Oh thank God.”

“Yeah. Thank God.” Danny was too relieved to pay much attention to the sharpness in her tone.

“Morning guys.”

Danny turned to see a rumpled Jamie standing in the doorway to their kitchen, eyeing his brother’s coffee.

“Morning Jamie.” Linda handed him a cup, which he gratefully accepted. “Sleep ok on that couch?”

“Y’know that thing is actually really comfortable.”

Linda forced a smile. “You have today off, Jamie?”

The youngest Reagan seemed a bit caught off guard. “Uhh...Renzulli gave it to me, yeah.”

“Great. You can play nursemaid then while I run some errands.”

Danny rolled his eyes. “I don’t need a babysitter, dear.”

Linda angrily grabbed her purse. “After the stunt you pulled last night? You do.”

Jamie slunk awkwardly back into the living room.

Danny sighed. “I’m sorry, Linda, I’ll...I’ll call one of these places today, I’ll-“

“You better.” She snatched her keys off the counter, pausing at the doorway. “If...if one of my sons _ever_ has reason to ask me again if his father is going to kill himself...”

She let that hang in the air, perhaps unable to finish it, and left. Danny stared at his coffee.

“I guess...I guess I shouldn’t ask if you’re feeling any better?”

There was his brother, sitting down at the table next to him, in his undershirt and uniform pants, coffee held tight in his hand.

Danny eyed him. “Yeah, a bit I guess. I didn’t lose my job.”

“Yeah I...I heard. I’m glad.”

“Me too.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Jamie nursing his coffee and Danny staring blankly at the list in front of him.

“I liked that one, there.” Danny looked up at his brother, who pointed at the third one on the list. “It’s close, well known, takes your insurance.”

Danny rubbed his eyes. “Sure. Whatever.”

“...Or that one looked good too.”

“Sounds great.”

Jamie looked from the paper to Danny and back again. “...Something wrong?”

Danny shrugged and shook his head. “Reagans, we don’t...we don’t _do_ this.”

“Do what?”

Danny gestured to the list.

“You mean counseling?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Why not? Who said Reagans don’t ‘do this’?”

“I don’t know...Gramps. Dad.”

Jamie scoffed. “Screw em.”

Danny looked up in surprise. “What did you say?”

“I said screw em. Screw em for implying that needing some help somehow makes you weak or something lesser, ‘Reagans don’t do this’...You know what, I think Reagans should.”

“That’s great kid, but I don’t do this.”

Jamie shrugged. “From Sarge’s mouth to Renzulli’s to my ears, if you want your job back-“

“I get it, I get it.”

Jamie eyed his brother over the rim of his coffee cup. 

*******

His partner looked like he had the flu, Renzulli noted as soon as he saw the kid next. Because of the crowded locker room, Renzulli let it go. Alone with his partner in the patrol car, not so much.

“You good, kid?

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

Jamie glanced at him and looked quickly away, not answering. Renzulli frowned at him and let it go again. Biding his time, so to speak. Later, after coaxing a coffee into the rookie and parking the car on a nice quiet street in front of some classy brownstones, he tried again.

“You okay kid?”

Jamie nodded, not looking at him.

“You sick?”

“No.”

Remembering his partner’s phone call two days before, Renzulli feared the worst. He took a deep breath before beginning again.

“Something happen to your brother?” he asked as gently as he could. 

To his relief, Jamie shook his head and rubbed his eyes.

“Rough couple days is all,” he said hoarsely.

“What’s going on?”

Jamie chewed on his lip, staring out the window. Probably considering whether or not to talk about what was bothering him.

“…You remember when my dad called me two days ago in the middle of my shift?” Renzulli nodded. “Well…my brother Danny, he….he does this thing sometimes when he’s upset, he’ll just kinda…disappear. He only does it when something big happens, he’s never in his right mind when he does it, and…well he thought he got fired right?”

The kid was rambling. Renzulli’s heart sank the longer he went on. Jamie only did this when something real bad went down.

“Yeah, I remember.”

“Well…my dad got over there ‘fore I did, Danny’d come back. Guess he was a real mess…said some stuff…” Jamie stopped for a moment. Renzulli hoped he couldn’t guess what was coming next. “My dad said…he’d been thinking about ending his life.” Jamie’s voice cracked.

“Oh Jamie…”

“His wife told me later…when he’d disappeared she’d expected that next she’d see him she’d have to identify his body. Said Danny’d taken one of his guns with him when he disappeared...”

Sarge had no idea what to do or say to that. He had no idea and seeing his partner biting his cheek to keep from crying because he was afraid of losing the only brother he had left was too much, so he hugged him, awkwardly reaching across the console. The kid melted into it, probably unconsciously. Renzulli could remember well enough that when someone in the family was suffering, everyone else’s struggle and feelings on the matter took a backseat. No doubt Jamie took that to the extreme.

“I don’t know what to do Sarge,” he rasped, hands tightly grasping Renzulli’s coat. “I can’t do this again, I can’t lose Danny too!”

Renzulli rubbed the kid’s back. “You told him that?”

“Yes!” Jame pulled away and scrubbed the dampness from his cheeks. “It’s like he doesn’t really hear you, like he’s not completely there.”

“You tried yelling louder? I mean I know Danny a little, and he’s got kind of a thick skull and selective hearing at best.”

Jamie smiled a little at that, then looked at Renzulli like he’d suddenly cured cancer. “You might be onto something there, Sarge.”

Renzulli stared at the kid as he pulled out his phone, dialing his father’s number. “I am?”

*******

So what if he avoided his family for the next to days? He doubted they wanted to see him after the stunt he pulled, and he really didn’t want to deal with their scrutiny, so it worked out.

Maybe he avoided making that appointment as well. What of it?

He hadn’t planned on talking to any of them at all, that is until he did his daily (make that ‘as-often-as-he-remembered’ these days) check that his off duty weapons were still in the lock box, only to find that they were, in fact, not.

He called his wife in a panic.

“Honey, somebody walked off with my off duty piece!” he panted as soon as she picked up, mind speeding over the possibilities of who could have taken it, who would have motive to do so, damn it who wanted to fuck him over more than he already was—

“Why would you need it?” she sounded weary and fed up, as she had for days.

“Why would I…” It took a few minutes to piece it together. “…You think I was gonna use it on myself.”

“Can you blame me?”

In that moment he could, but he bit his tongue. “What did you do with it?”

“I wanted it out of my house! Your father has it.”

He hung up and called his father.

*******

Frank had been expecting a call from his son for some days now. He didn’t bother to pretend that his son called him for any other reason that Thursday afternoon.

“You took my guns.”

“I did.”

Garrett, who had been giving him a briefing, frowned at the Commissioner, heart sinking for the man. He glanced at Baker, who nodded minutely and slipped silently out to shoo away Frank’s next appointment.

“What the fuck.”

Frank flinched, more out of shock that his son swearing at him no longer shocked him.

“Your wife was concerned about you.”

“Doesn’t give her the right!”

Garrett sat down on the couch, staring into middle distance, a silent and unobtrusive (he hoped) presence in the room. Support. He had been in the room when Frank had received the call about Joe. He had helped hold the man up through the vicious grieving process that came with losing a son. He honestly thought that watching one’s son slowly slip away was worse than losing him in a heartbeat.

He’d been down to the 12th precinct a week prior to collect something from Sergeant Gormley, and he’d seen Danny. He’d been shocked at how _bad_ he looked. He noticed a stark resemblance mirrored on his father’s face days later, the day after he’d been called away to his son’s home on Staten Island.

 _If Danny died_ , he barely dared think, _how many more Reagans would go with him?_  

“We were all concerned about you. You can’t fault us for taking precautions.”

Garrett couldn’t hear what was said next. The conversation seemed to end abruptly not long after. He watched Frank stare at his phone for a long moment, tears threatening his eyes.

Baker returned briefly, setting a glass of water down on his desk.

“Your schedule is clear until 4.”

Frank nodded his thanks.

“Is there anything we can do?” Garrett asked cautiously. Frank didn’t look up from the file he was reading when he responded.

“Pray.”

Garrett could do that. He could only hope that it would help.

He watched when not much later his boss jumped out of his skin when his younger son called, no doubt dreading the worst. That phone call, by contrast, seemed to go better than the previous one. 

*******

After much coaxing and bribing, Linda managed to get him out of the house for Sunday dinner and Danny, the great detective, didn’t notice his sons were absent from the back of the car.

He’d walked right into a trap. His family probably didn’t see it that way, but it certainly looked that way to him when his wife ushered him into is father’s house in time for him to see his father, grandfather, brother, and sister gathered in the living room. Waiting. For him. In reality, he supposed he’d set himself up for it.

“…The hell is this?”

“A family meeting.”

Danny stared at his father. “About?” Maybe he’d get lucky and it’d be about Jamie getting married or something. Frank sighed. Danny supposed he was hardly so lucky.

“We’re worried about you.”

“So you’ve been telling me over the last few months.” His gaze flickered from person to person. Grandpa was staring out the window and Erin was staring at nothing. Jamie was staring at the floor. Only his father looked Danny in the eye.

“You’ve yet to make that appointment.”

“And that is your concern because?”

“You are my son. It is my job to be concerned about you.” Ah. Commissioner mode. Lovely.

“You tried to kill yourself, Danny.” That was Erin. Overly dramatic as usual, he would have teased her if he wasn’t so sick of this trope.

“I did no such thing,” he replied rather condescendingly. Maybe he was egging her on, who knows. S’what he did when he was angry. She took the bait.

“So what was Thursday night, a joke?”

“A walk in the fucking park, I’ve told, what, one, two, three of you!”

The room was silent. Danny looked around challengingly. “We done here?”

“You do not get to do this to us.” Oh.

“Erin-“ She cut off her Grandfather.

“You’re tearing this family apart by your refusal to help yourself!” The family stared at her like she was crazy, frozen solid. “I get it, you must feel like shit, but you do not get to take it out on us!”

Danny nodded, trying to cool his anger. He wasn’t succeeding. “And how am I doing that?”

“You think what you’ve been doing has had no effect on us?”

“Erin!”

She ignored her father. “We all see you and how sick you look. We’re sick to death with worry.”

“Erin that’s enough!”

She ignored her younger brother too. “My daughter sees it, _your sons_ see it!” Danny’s shoulders tensed.“You forget I heard everything you said in that courtroom. I get it-“

“Oh do you now?”

“Yes! Danny, I do-“

“No you don’t.”

“Yes! Look, I know-“

“AND HOW WOULD YOU KNOW, EH?” Everyone in the room jumped at Danny’s outburst. Erin especially stared at him, wide eyed. “How. The hell. Would you know? How the FUCK would any of you know how I feel, hmm?” His chest heaved for breath. He must’ve looked like a madman, some faraway part of him mused. “And you threaten to expose everything I told you in confidence so that you could put away the bastards that I wrapped up for you in a nice little bow with all kinds of charges you could pick from, yet you let the judge throw out everything I got for you.”

She looked horrified. Danny ceded a little to the nastier side of himself and reveled in it.

“What it is about you, you make my job that much harder, you know that? ‘You have no case, Danny, no evidence blah blah!’” He mocked. “You know something? If you’d have gotten me that warrant when I asked for it, like you coulda, I coulda gotten my shit together and popped em a week earlier _and_ made it stick too. You know what that means? If you’d have just swallowed your fucking I’m-a-lawyer-and-I’m-better-than-you pride, I wouldn’t have had to chase those shits down for trying to leave town. I wouldn’t have ended up in that alleyway, I wouldn’t have been dragged into that warehouse, _I wouldn’t have been raped_.”

Erin was crying. His own cheeks felt wet. He was shivering. Most of him couldn’t believe that he’d just blamed his rape on his sister. The small bit of him, the part that was so unbelievably angry and sick of feeling so _bad_ didn’t care. That part was stronger.

The whole family stared at him in shock. _Think I was tearing the family apart before? Hold my beer,_ he mused miserably. It was his father who broke the silence.

“You’re angry. You should be. What happened to you was not fair. None of us can even begin to imagine how you feel, and none of us mean to imply that we can.” He glanced around. “And I apologize on behalf of all of us, myself especially included, for implying that we can.” He sighed. “But there is one thing we have to get straight, and that is that you will never speak to my daughter like that again. Is that understood?”

 _Is this what being dead feels like?_ he wondered, flooded with shame.

“You want the truth?” he said very quietly. “The truth is that I feel like I’m going crazy. That I haven’t slept since it happened, eating makes me sick, and everyone treats me like I’m made of glass. _Every_ night I’m bombarded by nightmares, flashbacks, to the point where nothing feels real. I just feel so godawful all day every day that I can barely function and Lord help me, what I would do to _make it stop.”_

He felt like he was hung in suspended animation.

“The truth is that I don’t know if I can survive this.” The bitter words hung in the air like smoke. “‘M sorry sis,” he continued even quieter. “I didn’t mean that, I…didn’t mean it. That was all bullshit.” He turned to leave, or at least go outside and decompress. He barely made it more than two steps.

“Danny!” Suddenly his arms were full of sister. She held tight to him, burying her face in his shoulder and fumbling through apologies. He patted her shoulder gently.

 _This is what it looks like when a family gives up on someone,_ he realized, eyes taking in the defeated looks on his family’s faces. He hadn’t seen that look on his baby brother’s face since Joe died. 

Since Joe died…

He would make his damn appointment first thing tomorrow, he decided. He doubted he could fix the mess he’d just made, but he could try. Anything to not have to see his family look like this. Had they looked like this the whole time?

He didn’t know.

He wasn’t surprised when his father wouldn’t let him leave that night and that his brother wouldn’t let him out of his sight.

*******

His father and his brother sat on either side of him when he made the call the next morning, to the one Jamie had liked. They’d ignored his plea for “privacy please?” and rightfully so, he grouched, as he’d had every intention of severely downplaying everything and leaving quite a bit out. 

The woman on the other end of the line was calm, kind, and matter of fact in a distinctly ex-military fashion.

Then came the question “have you ever considered suicide?”

“No.” He was shocked by the ferociousness of his family’s glare. “Okay, okay, maybe once or twice.”

“And when was the last time?”

“Couple months ago.” 

“Danny.” His father’s voice left no room for argument. He settled on a few weeks and refused to be swayed further. He wasn’t trying to land in an asylum here, jeez. 

He shouldn’t have been surprised when he father drove him to his appointment that day (apparently the woman had taken his shifting timeframes to mean what they actually were (days…hours) rather than the weeks he’d said).

Considering Danny was known for skipping out on things like these, he couldn’t blame him. Don’t get him wrong, he wanted his job back, but…

The woman who saw him was about his age. African American with neat braids and a stern but empathetic face. Former Navy medical, she said. Her experiences with traumatized soldiers while she was in had guided her to this line of work once her contract was up.

Already, he supposed, that made her better than any other doctor his family or job had thrown him at. 

“These next questions are for diagnostic purposes,” she told him. “I’d appreciate it if you could be as honest with me as you feel comfortable.”

“I don’t feel comfortable,” he answered honestly. She nodded, but didn’t seem upset or condescending.

“I doubt you really want to be here, but I can tell you love your job, from what you’ve said. If you help me help you, you can get outta here quicker.”

He answered her questions as honestly as his pride could stand him to be, which burned nonetheless. She listened attentively, but not invasively, which was nice. She made a few notes on her notepad and told him that she would absolutely like to see him back, and because his job was connected to his improvement, she could fit him in again the next day.

“What are you gonna do with me?”

She didn’t react to his phrasing. “Cognitive Processing Therapy,  or CPT. It’s the best method of treatment for PTSD that I’ve encountered. It’s focused around helping you desensitize yourself to the events that occurred, which oughta help with those nightmares.” That was tempting. “Does that sound like something you could feasibly do?”

He supposed he had to, so he nodded.

His father was reading a nutrition magazine in the waiting room when he walked out. His face flushed in annoyance as he walked out. His father took it in stride and waved at the receptionist as he followed him out. 

“How’d it go?” he asked in the car.

“Gotta go back tomorrow.”

“Well that’s good.”

“Sure.”

*******

He hadn’t felt this exhausted even after a 48 hours shift, he noted as he walked in the door of his house.

_Shower and then bed…maybe just bed._

He’d been taking off his watch by the window for ten minutes, the clock told him, when small footsteps snapped him out of whatever misguided reverie he’d been lodged in.

“Dad?”

He turned. His eldest son, Jack, stood sheepishly by the door.

“Hey, kid, what’s up?” He drudged up his last molecules of energy to make that sound normal.

The boy didn’t respond right away, chewing on his cheek in obvious anxiety. Danny moved to sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, as he waited.

“Are you going to kill yourself?” Jack eventually blurted out. Danny had not been expecting that. He felt like he had been drenched in ice water.

“…What?”

“It just…I guess I’ve been kinda quiet and my friend asked me what was wrong, so I told him. And he said his uncle acted kinda like you…upset and…right before he killed himself—“

“What? No!” Without realizing he had moved, he was on his knees in front of his son, gathering the 11 year old up in his arms. “No no no no…”

Jack hugged him tightly, sniffling. “I was so scared after he said that, that he was right, I had to say something, I couldn’t just—“

“Shhh, no, no, never. I won’t lie to ya, buddy, I’ve been feeling real bad for a while, but I’d never do that, I swear it.”

Jack nodded against his father’s shoulder, refusing to let go. It was then that they were joined by Sean, who’d clearly been listening as his brother asked what they’d both been thinking. He nearly knocked them all over with the force of his hug. He’d be good at football, a far away part of Danny’s mind mused.

“I’ll never kill myself, I promise. I promise,” he said over and over again, still holding his sons tight.

The next day, he sat down and told the therapist everything. 

“What prompted this?” she asked him at the end of their session, curious given Danny’s extreme reluctance the day before.

“My sons asked me if I was going to kill myself last night. They’d asked my wife before, but it didn’t hit me until now. I promised them I never would. I gotta get outta this rut I’m in if I’m gonna keep that promise.”

She nodded.

*******

One thing was for certain, EMDR sucked. But CPT sucked worse, so he could live with it.

“There’s a reason I don’t want to remember any of this.”

“And there’s a reason why you haven’t forgotten it yet.” She never rose to any of his bait, it was frustrating. 

They worked slowly on the actually processing part, and more extensively on dragging Danny out of his bone deep depression.

It was several weeks before she deemed him well enough to try going back to work.

“I’m still gonna freeze up if a perp touches me,” he muttered as she signed off for him to go back.

“We’re working on that. You’re doing well, you know.”

He was glad she thought so. 

*******

Walking into work was an interesting experience. It felt remarkably similar to when he’d first returned after the incident. He’d gotten good at ignoring the stares. What he hadn’t been prepared for was being steamrolled by Jackie as soon as he walked into his boss’s office. He barely managed to remain upright as she nearly tackled him, hugging him tightly.

“Goddamn you, Reagan, you don’t get to do that, you don’t get to do that!” was muffled into his shoulder. It was then that he remembered her two previous partners had eaten their guns. He hugged her back just as tightly.

“I wasn’t gonna, I wasn’t ever gonna,” he lied to reassure her.

“I’m not losing you too.”

“You’re right, you’re not.”

She reluctantly let go of him when Gormley cleared his throat, mumbling she’d be out at their desks when Gormley’d checked him back in.

Danny was surprised to find that when he looked at his boss, he had an emotion other than annoyance visible on his face. In fact, he looked fairly penitent, and also relieved.

“Good God, Reagan,” he rasped. “When Sergeant Renzulli called me and explained what he could gather about why he needed to ask me what he was asking me, I thought…” he swallowed. “I thought I was gonna be going to a funeral, damn it!”

Danny tamped down on a swell of self-hatred. “If I had, it wouldn’t have been on you.”

“I’m the one who kicked you out, your blood woulda been on my hands!”

“No,” Danny said firmly. “It woulda been on mine and those perps. Not you, or anybody else.” He dug the letter out of his pocket. “But this says I’m past that.”

“Good.” The Sarge read it over before digging Danny’s service weapon and badge out of his desk drawer. “Welcome back. And don’t you forget we love you around here! It was way too boring and quiet without ya.”

“Aww shucks, Sarge, you’re gonna make me blush.”

*******

It’d been well over a year, Danny mused while leaning against the railing on a pier, indulging his brother’s fishing hobby. Both perps were in jail for a good long while, and he was doing quite a bit better, much thanks to his dear friend the ex-Navy medic. He still had a ways to go, but hey, it’s all relative.

Jamie had asked him how he was doing, and he’d brushed it off out of sheer habit. He was supposed to be breaking that. 

“I’m…hanging in there,” he finally said. “I mean therapy still sucks but what are you gonna do, right? She says I’m improving.

”Jamie looked over at him. “Do you feel like you are?”

“Yeah.”

Jamie nodded and went back to looking out over the water.Danny did the same for a while before continuing. “She also says opening up to someone I trust, building a support system, will help.”

“You don’t have to say anything if you’re not comfortable.”

“Hey if she thinks’s it’ll help.”

Jamie waited patiently while Danny thought about how to put words together. 

“You know,” he said after a while, “the syphilis shot goes in your ass.”

Jamie choked on his own spit. “ _WHAT_?”

Danny laughed. “For the rape kit they do, they give you about every shot known to man. I figured, well why not just test the perps while they’re baking in central booking, but they insisted that this was better, like no not really.”

“Oh my God.”

“I know right?” 

They sat in amicable silence for a while longer before Jamie piped up. “I’m glad you’re still here.”

A brief swell of emotion prevented him for immediately responding to the true meaning of those words. “Good, cuz this is fucking boring, I don’t know how you do this all the time.”

Jamie huffed and rolled his eyes. Danny smiled a little and looked back out at the river.

“…Me too, kid.”

**_El Fin_ **


	2. Alternate Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At some point, Danny had gotten up off the back step and had started walking. He never came back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for: suicidal character who then commits suicide (off screen, however his spiral is detailed), vague description of the scene of a suicide, discussion of past rape, discussion of violence, unhealthy coping mechanisms/mindsets. This is extremely depressing. If you are struggling with mental illness, please exercise extreme caution when reading this. Take care of yourself, please. If you’re feeling bad, go back a chapter and reread that ending, it’s about hope. This is an extremely frustrating story, as is anything dealing with someone dying suddenly and by suicide. So I have warned you. 
> 
> Also Jamie is a tad out of character in this thing, however I decided that if I was going to do the whole alternate ending thing, then I was going to go all out and indulge every whim I had while writing it.
> 
> One more time: if you think this may bother you, or if it starts to bother you, please don’t read it. If you want to read it, but would rather skip the whole spiral bit, count down 4 paragraph breaks (lines of 7 asterisks) which will take you til when they find him after he’s already died. If you want to skip that part too and go right to the funeral and how the family deals, count down 2 more

_“Danny,” Linda was surprised. “You’re home early!” Danny walked straight to the fridge. Just a beer and a cigarette and then maybe he could process this day. “Danny?” Linda sounded concerned now. It seemed like Danny was floating above his body, watching everything unfold. “Danny!” There was a touch of hysteria seeping into her voice._

_He was almost at the door when she grabbed his arm and spun him around. “What happened!”_

_He looked at her and passively said, “I got fired.”_

_His wife stared at him. “…What?” Her voice was very small. Danny hated himself._

_“I said I got fired.” It was at that moment that he spotted his sons sitting at the table, staring with their mouths gaping like fish. The same children he could no longer support, in any sense of the word. It was a strange feeling for someone already numb to feel number. He looked back to his wife. “I’m sorry.” And he walked out the backdoor._ Maybe after a few I’ll be able to think _._

_*******_

Danny’s head buzzed unpleasantly. At some point, he’d gotten up from the back step and had started walking. He didn’t remember getting up. He was headed in the direction of the pier.

A thousand things ran through his mind. _No job, who would hire him with his disciplinary record? How was he supposed to support his family? Howhowhow—_

_Useless. Worthless._

_I want to die._

He vaguely noticed that he was panicking, his breath coming in harsh, quick pants. But it didn’t seem real. Nothing did. He wished none of this was real.

_Quite literally worth more dead than alive._

The wood made an ominous clunking sound under his shoes. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton. His heart felt like it would burst through his sternum.

_Worth more dead than alive._

Everything looked blurry, was he crying? Yeah, he was, he observed objectively. In fact, he was damn near sobbing.

_Better off dead._

The buzzing in his head had gotten loud. So loud he could hardly think. He was so tired. 

_Were you even raped at all?_

_Your fault._

_All of this was your fault._

“Shut up,” he barely breathed.

_Wasn’t raped at all._

_Weak._

_No, this was never ever_ _going to stop. God, make it /stop/—_

He would rather die than suffer through this forever. _Nothing_ was worth this pain, _nothing_.

His off duty piece was heavy in his pocket. He wasn’t sure when he’d grabbed it.

_Please, just make it stop_. _Make it stop._

_*******_

_“It’s Danny! Danny’s gone, he’s just gone!”_

_“Linda, Linda, slow down dear. What do you mean he’s gone?” He was the Commissioner. He could keep a straight face and a calm voice under any situation. Even as his heart tried to beat out of his chest._

_“He came home early from work, said he’d been fired-“ Fired? Oh no. “He was barely talking, he wouldn’t listen to me, he just sat on the back step chain-smoking. I left to chase the boys upstairs, and when I came back he was just gone, I looked everywhere for him! I tried calling him but he left his phone on the step!” Her voice bled raw panic. Frank felt it too._

_“Alright, keep an eye out for him, I’ll be right there.”_

_*******_

Nothing ever happened on Staten Island. Sure, the occasional robbery. This or that. It was about as boring a job as a cop could get, mused one beat cop on a cold winter evening.

The radio buzzed on the dash.

“ _We have a report of shots fired down by the pier.”_

_“_ 202 responding,” his partner replied, turning on the lights. Off they sped to the pier. The cop sighed. Nothing good ever came of shots fired by the water.

_How exciting_ , he couldn’t help but think, all the while feeling guilty for thinking it.

...Someone was laying on the end of the pier. That much was obvious when they both pulled up. 

Both cops leaped out of the car.

“NYPD!” he shouted. No response. The pair crept closer to the figure. Male, fairly tall, black overcoat.

“Sir! Are you okay?” shouted his partner. No response. 

“Sir?” he asked again, glancing at his partner in dread. Visible to them now was a gun in the man’s left hand, a splatter of blood on the wooden planks under him.

“Oh my God,” his partner whispered.

“Damn it, this sucks,” he agreed, unable to tear his eyes away from the clear suicide victim. Finally glancing over at his partner, he found him white as a sheet, staring open mouthed at the man on the dock. 

“Hey, hey easy!” the cop said, moving carefully over to his partner.

“Oh my God…” his partner said again.

“What? I mean, obviously, but—“

“Don’t you recognize him?”

The cop bit his lip. “You know him?”

“Not personally…”

The cop frowned, looking back at the man. “Who is he?”

His partner swallowed hard. “That’s…that’s Danny Reagan.”

It was the cop’s turn to stare open mouthed at the man on the docks. Absurdly, he noticed the tears still visible on the man- Danny Reagan’s- face.

“Oh my God…”

“Holy hell…” His partner sounded choked up. The cop couldn’t blame him. He felt a bit like crying himself.

*******

It was just a phone call. It could have been any phone call. Garrett wished it had been any other phone call. But it was a phone call that came mere seconds after he hung up with Linda. What else could it be but the worst?

He’d only seen the Commissioner fold like that once before. He had an idea before the man had even put down the phone. 

What could he do? He called the car. Sat next to his boss, silent (as the grave), in the back as they drove to that Staten Island pier. Frank Reagan exited the vehicle, ever the stoic, strong Commissioner, despite the fact that he was going to identify his eldest son’s body. 

It was exactly like the day Joe died.

Garrett felt like he’d had the breath knocked out of him as he walked down the pier a few steps behind Frank. He could do nothing but watch as the Commissioner stopped dead at the sight of his son’s body (because of course it was him, who else could it be but Danny Reagan on the end of that pier?)

He watched as his boss knelt down and gently wiped away the tears on his son’s face, jaw trembling.

“That’s him,” he said quietly to the two cops waiting to have him identified, eyes not leaving his son’s face.

There were press gathering at the edge of the police tape. Oh hell no.

That Garrett could do something about. He’d be damned if the press found out before the rest of Danny’s family.

*******

It was turning out to be a decent shift. Renzulli was glad for that. His partner had been pretty down for a while and it was good to see the kid smiling again.

He should’ve known that wouldn’t last.

It started with a text. They’d been strolling down a busy Brooklyn street when Renzulli noticed the kid looking down at his phone.

“Oi, no texting on the job,” Renzulli had teased.

“Sorry, s’from my brother. He sent it a while ago...”Jamie’d mumbled, focused on his phone. Renzulli watched as the rookie’s brows furrowed in confusion for a moment before his eyes grew as wide as dinner plates.

“Everything okay?” Renzulli asked, dread brewing beneath his sternum.

Jamie didn’t respond, frantically dialing a number and pacing as he waited for presumably his brother to pick up.

“Shit,” Jamie swore when his brother didn’t answer and tried calling again. “C’mon, Danny, pick up.”

“Jamie, what’s wrong?”

His partner chewed on his lip nervously.

“My brother, he sent me this text. All it said was ‘I’m sorry’ and now he won’t pick up his damn phone—“

Renzulli was beginning to fear the worst when Danny didn’t pick up by the fifth try.

“You tried Linda?”

“Danny’s working, she wouldn’t be with him…do you have Jackie Curatola’s number by chance?”

Renzulli did. Just as he was pulling his phone out of his pocket to get it, the kid’s phone rang. Jamie’s face, briefly alight with hope, fell after a moment. With a quick glance at Renzulli, “It’s my father, give me a sec,” Jamie answered the phone with furrowed eyebrows.

“Hey Pop, I’m in the middle of my shift, what’s...no, I’m on duty. Hey, look have you talked to Danny? He sent me this really weird text—?”

Renzulli could do nothing but watch as every ounce of color drained from the rookie’s face. Briefly afraid he was going to topple over, Renzulli reached out to steady him.

“I’ll be right there…” Jamie whispered, hand dropping to his side, white as a sheet.

“Jamie, what’s going on?”

The poor kid started to shake. Renzulli was glad that the car was not far away as he quickly steered his shaken partner back to it. Safely inside the privacy of the squad car, he pressed again. Jamie blinked.

“My…my brother’s dead…my brother’s dead…” It seemed to hit him then. As soon as the words left his mouth, he crumpled forward in his seat, face buried in his hands as he sobbed, “ _My brother’s dead._ ”

Renzulli’s chest clenched hard enough to force him to talk around a sudden lump in his throat. “Where do you need to go, Jamie?”

“The p-pier down at…no. No, my grandfather’s house. I have to…”

“You got it, kid.”

The drove over in complete silence (what was there to say?), Renzulli’s hand on the back of Jamie’s neck, gently rubbing at his hairline as the rookie remained folded over, shaking. A small comfort. What else could he do?

_*******_

Something bad was going to happen. Henry Reagan had known that as soon as he had gotten up that morning. He prayed a rosary before breakfast, and another before lunch. A sick feeling told him it wouldn’t help.

When his grandson showed up at the door in the middle of the afternoon, pale as a ghost and eyes tinged red, he knew it hadn’t.

“It’s…it’s Danny…he told me…he told me he was sorry and they…they found him…” Jamie couldn’t continue. Henry didn’t need him to. He folded the kid up in his arms and let him muffle his sobs in his shoulder. It was then that he noticed Renzulli standing a the bottom of the steps, hat held behind his back as he stared aimlessly at the steps, a wayward tear making its way down his cheek.

“There there now,” he whispered to his sobbing grandson. He found himself immeasurably glad that Renzulli was there, had been there, when Jamie had gotten the news. Jamie had never given the eldest Reagan a reason to worry, but suicide was, after all, contagious. Because that’s why they had found Danny someplace and Jamie was standing at the door inconsolable, wasn’t it? Danny had killed himself, hadn’t he?

_*******_

Erin was numb as she stood outside the office, waiting for Nicki to come down from her after school program. What was she supposed to tell her? How was she supposed to explain that _her uncle had killed himself_. And how was she going to answer the inevitable question, _why_?

Don’t cry. Not yet.

“Mom?” Erin jumped. Nicki stood before her, clearly concerned. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

Erin found she couldn’t speak. Instead, she motioned for Nicki to follow her out to the car, doing her best to ignore her daughter’s questions until then.

“Mom!” Nicki nearly shouted once they were safely in the car. “What’s going on??”

Erin took a deep breath, reaching over to take her daughter’s hand.

“Your Uncle Danny killed himself this afternoon…”

Nicki stared at her. “What? _Why?_ What…That can’t be true.”

_Keep going. Just keep going._ “We have to go over to Linda’s, make sure she and your cousins are okay…” As she went to shift the car into drive, her hand was stopped by her daughter’s.

“Are you okay to drive, Mom?”

Erin looked over at her daughter’s tearstained but remarkably clear face. No, Erin mused. No she was not.

*******

They all gathered at the Reagan home in Brooklyn that evening. It had been hours and nobody had said a word. Nobody except Linda, who kept saying over and over, “I should have stopped him, I should never have let him out of my sight…” They were all in shock, but Frank was keeping an eye on her especially. Any cop knew how dangerous shock could be.

He had been standing by the window, staring out of it for quite some time. Jamie and Erin sat on the couch in a pile-like fashion with the three kids. Danny’s boys had yet to even react in any way.

Frank knew he should probably say something. At least talk with his father about making plans.

_He was never supposed to have to do this again_ …

He didn’t want to do anything but stare out the window. He couldn’t get the image of his son’s body lying on the dock out of his head. He was glad nobody else had seen it.

*******

Gormley had gotten the news the minute he walked into work the next day. Uncomprehendingly, he had parroted back the news to his precinct.

Jackie quit on the spot.

“I’m done,” she shouted, ripping the badge off her belt and tossing her gun on the desk. “I’m done!”

That made three partners of hers who had eaten their guns.

He robotically rattled off the information he always had to say when a cop died, he wasn’t even sure if it was comprehensible. Nobody said anything. Nobody except Jackie.

“What good is any of this? Hmm? It didn’t help him! None of us did! We failed him.” She had started to cry. She wasn’t the only one. “I failed him...”

A fellow cop reached out to comfort her, but she shook him off, not even bothering to wipe the tears off her face.

“He was alive just yesterday...”

“Jackie...” someone started. She ignored them and walked out. Gormley didn’t blame her in the slightest. An increasingly large part of him wanted to do the same.

He didn’t remember much of the rest of the day.

Home in his wife’s arms, he broke down.

“This is _my_ fault! I killed my friend…if I hadn’t kicked him out he wouldn’t have gone home and shot himself! This is all my fault…”

That wasn’t true, his wife said. He didn’t kill Danny Reagan.

“He was alive just yesterday...” he sobbed, face buried in his wife’s shoulder.

He didn’t kill Danny Reagan, his wife said agin. Danny Reagan killed himself. But it was all the same to Sid Gormley. His friend was dead because of him. He would live believing it for the rest of his life.

*******

Jamie felt like he’d died with his brother. The first few days after he’d heard the news were a blur. He knew he’d spent all of them crying, absolutely inconsolable, those two words “I’m sorry” burned into his retinas. Then it’d all just stopped, like a valve turned off. He hadn’t felt anything since. He hadn’t said much either.

“You need to eat something, Jamie,” Linda said, shoving a plate of food in front of him. When she was upset, she cooked, she’d explained. Right then, it was the only thing keeping her afloat. 

He managed a few bites. They tasted like ash.

How could he eat? That day, he would be burying his brother.

He had decided he hated the color black. He was planning on burning this suit as soon as he got home (he couldn’t bring himself to put on his dress blues like he was supposed to. He was going to burn whatever he wore and he couldn’t burn those. Besides, they reminded him too much of his brother). 

The church was freezing cold. He didn’t really feel it. Didn’t really hear the words the priest was speaking, the eulogy his father gave. Even sat on the pew, squished between his sister and his grandfather, he couldn’t stop feeling the weight of his brother’s coffin on his right shoulder.

_This isn’t how this was supposed to go._

At least it was raining when they got to the cemetery. Jamie might’ve screamed if it had been sunny.

_Like it was the day he died._

Jamie decided he hated the sun. Honestly, Jamie decided he hated everything as he stood there, rain soaking through his jacket. Instead of tossing a bit of dirt into the grave, as was tradition, everyone ended up with a clump of mud. Jamie hated mud. And roses, he would never buy a girl roses again. 

Back at the house after the funeral, after he had stripped off that awful black coat and tie, he might’ve picked up his brother’s smoking habit. The others were telling stories about Danny, or trying to. Jamie just couldn’t sit in there and listen to it, so instead he snatched a pack of cigarettes he’d picked up at the bodega down the street from his apartment and sat on the front step, letting the nicotine calm his frayed nerves. His grandfather had stuck his head out the front door and scolded him for smoking, asking him why he wasn’t sitting with the family. Jamie pretended not to have heard him. 

“Leave him be, it’s ok,” he heard Erin say. His grandfather huffed.

“Don’t you be going the way of your brother, you hear, Jamison?”

Oo. That touched a nerve. A wave of anger (at his grandfather, at his brother (at himself for not saving him)) washed up inside of him. He turned around to look at them.

“What? You think just because I’m sitting out here smoking that I’m gonna go and off myself like he did? That I’m gonna go home and eat my gun like he did, hmm?” He watched them flinch and part of him enjoyed it. “No. Never. Because what good would that do? Hmm? Fuckin’ selfish is what that is! And I’m not like that. I’m not like Danny!” He turned back around and drew in a lungful of smoke. They left him alone after that.

_How could he do this?_ part of him screamed. _How could he?!_ Another part of Jamie ran over every interaction he’d had with his brother over the past weeks, searching for some sign, something he’d missed.

_As if he could go back in time and change it. As if he could go back and take the gun from his brother’s hand. Stop him. Do anything to stop him._ A tear ran down his cheek. _He was alive just last week…_

Fine, maybe he’d go in and join them, just as soon as the burn in his chest faded a little. It occurred to him suddenly that the second perp’s trial would be coming to a close soon.

_They’d better find him guilty._

Really, how could they not, with all the evidence they’d compiled?

He never ended up joining his family. Chain-smoking on the front step seemed much more appealing, to be honest.

When he got home to his apartment, he set that suit alight in a trash can in the back alley.

*******

“We hereby find the defendant…not guilty.”

For the first time in nearly fifteen years of practicing law, Erin Reagan lost her composure in the court room.

Huffing a humorless laugh, she looked at the jury.

“You mean to tell me that my brother killed himself because of what that _bastard_ did to him, and you’re going to let him _walk_? Because my dead brother was not alive to give a testimony? Because, let me remind you again, he _killed himself_ because _this man_ raped him, which I _proved_ via DNA evidence?! Which ought to have been proven by the conviction and testimony of the defendant’s partner?!”

The judge, one Erin decided she hated more than the devil, banged the gravel.

“Watch your tone, Ms. Reagan. You proved nothing, save your brother had sex with this man. Nothing about the evidence shows it was not consensual.”

Needless to say, she had a few choice words for everyone involved, particularly the judge, who she accused of being corrupt, and the jury, who she accused of having been paid off (obviously! The medical evidence alone should have been enough for a conviction, and she had given them her brother’s hand written notes from the last trial as well, on top of everything else they had!).

Also needless to say, she was promptly found in contempt and thrown out. Her boss berated her later that they could have appealed that case, that he shouldn’t have listened to her when she said she was still okay to prosecute after her brother’s suicide. He was right of course, but she was too numb to care.

The biggest mistake out of all the mistakes she made that day was calling her remaining brother.

*******

They let him go.

Jamie could barely comprehend his sister’s words.

“They _let_ him _go_?”

“Yes, he walked—“

Jamie hung up the phone, grabbed his off duty piece, and started walking. He didn’t fully think about what he was doing. The only thing he could think through the blinding rage clouding his vision was that this was a wrong that had to be righted. 

In a shady part of Queens, he sought out several favors he had been saving, as well as several that had been owed to his brother.

“ _Where is he?!_ ” He shouted at the local smack dealer. “Darrell Dickens, the gang member, the one on trial for rape and kidnapping and I know you know who he is and I know you know where he is. _Tell me_!”

“Hey man, it ain’t you I owe a favor to—“

Like he said, Jamie, or at least the Jamie everyone knew, died with his brother. The old Jamie would have never dreamed of pulling out his off duty weapon and jamming it under the dealer’s jaw, cocked and loaded.

“Where. Is he.”

The dealer told him real quick after that.

*******

The overhead lights illuminated every inch of the basketball court currently well populated by the neighborhood gang. Jamie didn’t give a shit. He didn’t give a shit about anything anymore.

“Darrell Dickens.”

The bastard, surrounded by a number of goons, turned around.

“Who’s asking?” he drawled. Jamie had never hated anyone so much in his life. He pushed his hood off his head. So what if they saw him. He wanted them to. This wasn’t about making sure he got away with it, this was about cold-blooded revenge.

“Jamie Reagan.” And with that, he pulled the gun out of his pocket and shot the man who had raped his brother point-blank in the face.

The goons reeled back at first. Some of them ran right away. Some of them tried to recover and act all tough. No, Jamie didn’t give a shit about that either. He turned around and walked out, ignoring their yells and threats and dumping his gun in the nearest trashcan, too numb to care, and too high on adrenaline to think straight.

This wasn’t about not getting caught, it was about not letting the man, who for all intents and purposes had killed his brother, walk free. Somewhere in the depths of his mind, something whispered that he, the remaining Reagan son, should give a shit, if only for the sake of his family.

But like he said, his soul died with his brother. The only thing he could care about in that moment was fulfilled revenge and the adrenaline buzzing in his veins.

*******

“You doing okay, kid?” Renzulli was unsure of why he even bothered to ask the kid that anymore, it’s not as if he ever answered it. As per usual, Jamie didn’t so much as glance at his boss. Renzulli sighed. “Sorry to hear they let the bastard go.” That got a reaction: a disgusted curl of the rookie’s lip.

“Yeah, me too.”

“You might be…happy to hear that the bastard got himself shot last night.”

Jamie turned to look at his boss. “Is that so?” Renzulli nodded. The kid snorted, the corner of his mouth lifting ever so slightly in a smile. “Good.” The kid turned back to the report he was typing up.

A cold feeling settled in the pit of Renzulli’s stomach.

The kid had looked pleased, which Renzulli had expected. What he had not expected was the kid looking almost pleased with himself. Renzulli elected to ignore it. 

_I don’t blame you, Jamie, in fact I’d have helped you if you asked, but I sure hope you were careful_.

*******

Family dinner had been rough ever since Danny had passed. Obviously it had been. He and Francis tried to keep up the mood as much as possible, though they had little success.

They’d all heard, of course, what had happened the night after the perp had been released. That he’d gotten shot.

It was Linda who brought it up. 

“So I heard the bastard who killed my husband got shot earlier this week.”

Most of the people in the room stiffened. Henry noticed briefly that Jamie kept on eating. Part of him was relieved. The kid had not been taking care of himself since his brother died.

Linda fixed her eyes on Frank.

“Do you know who did it?”

Frank was silent for a moment before answering. “Why do you want to know that?”

“Because I want to send them flowers.” There was not even a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “They’ve done a real public service and I want to thank them for it.” No one said anything. Jamie didn’t look up from his food.

Erin nodded stiffly. “It was still a murder—“

Linda cut her off there. “Are you kidding me? He is the reason my husband - _your brother!_ \- is dead, who cares if somebody killed him? I applaud them!”

It was then that Jamie spoke. “I’m with Linda on this one. Whoever shot him did something the police and the courts couldn’t do, which is actually punish him for what he did.”

Erin stared at her remaining brother. “And what do you mean by that, exactly?”

“I mean he got off under your watch. I’m glad somebody had the guts to do something other than just let him walk.”

There was something in his grandson’s eyes that wasn’t there before. Henry didn’t like it one bit. From the looks of it, neither did Francis.

Neither Henry nor his son ate another bite, appetite stolen by the vicious argument that had erupted between brother and sister, and an increasingly sickening realization.

*******

“It was you.”

Jamie didn’t look up from where he was washing the dishes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Frank hadn’t felt this sick in…ever. He had never felt as sick as he did in that moment.

“It was you who shot Darrell Dickens.”

Jamie huffed a laugh. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Jamie, tell us the truth,” Henry spoke gravely. “If this was you, we need to know about it.”

The remaining Reagan son put down that plate he was holding heavily, a miserable smile crossing his face. “Why? So what if it was me, hmm?”

“Oh God,” was all Frank could say.

“What do you mean ‘so what’?” snapped Henry. “You murdered someone, that’s what!” 

It had been clear enough to Frank that a part of Jamie had died with each of his brothers, but he hadn’t realized exactly how much. Jamie glowered at his grandfather.

“And he murdered my brother!” Jamie snarled right back. “It’s because of him Danny killed himself! As far as I’m concerned, Danny’s blood was on his hands and I don’t know about you two, but I wasn’t gonna let that stand!”

“So you killed him!”

“So I killed him! A life for a life, plain and simple. Are you really going to tell me he deserved to live while Danny deserved to die?”

The kitchen was dead silent. Jamie smiled humorlessly. “I thought not.”

He turned back to washing the dishes. “Turn me in if you want. I don’t give a shit. I’d rather spend the rest of my life in prison than walking the streets knowing that bastard was walking them, too.”

Henry looked over at Frank, astounded. “Aren’t you gonna say something?”

Frank stood quietly a moment longer. “Did you hear they found the murder weapon? Registered, fingerprints and everything. Just waiting for the results to come back. Got the call before dinner. Wanted to keep me updated on everything related to my son’s case.”

Henry stared at him. “What?”

Frank continued, looking dead at Jamie. “You were sloppy is what you were. And because you were sloppy, they’re going to catch you. And my remaining son will be gone. Did you think of that before you shot him and dumped your gun in a trash can?”

Jamie didn’t answer. Frank swallowed around the lump in his throat, drinking in the sight of his youngest son alive and free, standing in his kitchen, because it may very well be the last time he’d see it.

But he wasn’t really his son anymore, his Jamie, was he? The real Jamie was buried in the family plot, with Joe and Danny.

“This conversation never happened,” he glanced between his father and his son. “It won’t be me who turns you in. But they are going to catch you, Jamie.”

“Fine.”

“No, Jamie, it’s not fine.”

He got the sinking feeling that would be the last conversation he would ever have with his son without plate of glass separating them.

*******

Renzulli knew it was coming. He knew it the minute he’d seen the look in Jamie’s eyes when he’d told him Darrell Dickens was shot and killed. That didn’t stop him from fighting tooth and nail when the detectives told him to arrest Jamie Reagan on suspicion of murder.

“No, not Jamie. Jamie would never do that.”

“Sergeant Renzulli, we have the kid’s fingerprints on the murder weapon and five eyewitnesses saying the murderer identified himself as Jamie Reagan before shooting Darrell Dickens point blank in the face. It was him.”

“He’s been framed!”

One of the detectives frowned. “Unlikely and you know it.”

“Hasn’t the Reagan family suffered enough? Their boy, Joe, dies on the job, Danny dies because of the job, and now you’re going to lock up Jamie because you guys couldn’t close one measly little rape and kidnapping case?”

The detectives stared at him. “Did you know about Jamie’s intent to kill Darrell Dickens?”

“What? No! How could I have known about something Jamie didn’t even do, hmm?”

The two detectives looked at each other. “Listen, what happened to Danny Reagan was a goddamn tragedy, and we would have been more than willing to write off the death of a known drug dealer as a gang feud, but the kid identified himself and we have five witnesses corroborating it along with the murder weapon. We don’t pursue this, it gets us all in trouble, understand? Now if you don’t arrest Jamie Reagan, we will arrest you on conspiracy. Got it?”

Renzulli understood well enough, the slimy, dishonorable bastards. If they all worked at it, this could go away. Risk of trouble, so what?

He briefly considered standing his ground. He would gladly give his life for that kid, going to jail was nothing. But, really, what good would it do?

He felt like crying.

*******

Jamie came in for his shift about twenty minutes later. He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Renzulli’s face.

“What’s going on, Sarge?”

Renzulli had been through a lot of shit in his day, but this took the fucking cake, arresting his partner and dear friend for murder. Fucking…

“Sarge?”

He pulled the kid into his arms and held on tight.

“God, Jamie, I’m so sorry...” he whispered.

Jamie rested his face briefly in the crook of Renzulli’s neck.

“It’s okay, Sarge,” he murmured, pulling away. “You do what you gotta do.”

Renzulli took a deep breath, tears threatening.

“Jamison Reagan, you’re under arrest for the murder of Darrell Dickens. Anything—“

“I say can and will be used against me, yeah I know the drill.”

He made the detectives cuff him. He could do a lot, but this…not this. Jamie glared around the room, which had fallen dead silent as Jamie was cuffed.

“What?” the rookie snapped. “What the _fuck_ are you looking at, hmm?” His eyes fell on two cops in particular. “Ramos, Morrison, you two were the ones who responded to the incident with my brother, right? You’re the ones who arrested the perps? Well, I got a question for you. Why didn’t you do anything? Hmm?”

The two cops stared at him in confusion.

“You know everybody always goes around in here talking about cops looking out for each other, but when my brother -hell both of them!- needed you the most, what did you do, hmm? _Nothing! Why the bloody fuck would you let them walk out of that warehouse, hmm?!”_

“Alright, Jamie, come on,” said one of the detectives, pulling him towards the door.

Jamie threw one last glare over his shoulder. “This, all of this, is on you! All of you!”

The door shut behind him with a final click.

More than one cop shed a tear that day.

Renzulli decided that after Jamie’s trial, he was going to quit. 

*******

Garrett hated this job sometimes.

_Jamie, arrested for murder?_ How they hell was he supposed to tell Frank that?

His boss wasn’t surprised when Garrett told him. He didn’t even try to act like it.

“Okay,” was all he said. 

_He knew?_

Holy mother of God. 

*******

Erin couldn’t stand the sight of her baby brother in an orange jumpsuit. She would have to get used to it, she supposed. He wasn’t even going to try to fight it. He had refused a lawyer and was going to enter a guilty plea. 

“They’ve got me dead to rights,” he’d told her when she’d visited him. “Why bother to claim anything else?”

He was right about that much. There was no way he could ever win this fight.

“How do you plead?” the judge, a hardline fool Erin couldn’t stand, asked. 

Jamie shrugged. “Guilty.”

A murmur went through the court room. Jamie held fast where he stood.

The judge nodded. “Do you have anything to say?”

“Not really, no.”

The judge frowned. “You have nothing to say for yourself? Nothing in your defense?”

Jamie shrugged again. “I mean, I half thought of pleading not guilty to see if you all suck as much as my brother’s jury did. I mean I very obviously killed Darrel Dickens, but then again he very obviously kidnapped and raped my brother and that didn’t stop the jury from letting him walk. I guess I don’t have the money to pay you all like he did, though. 

“And also, can I just say, you made made testify in front of his attackers. You denied his request to have the bastard removed from the room. I mean, really? So is it any wonder he ended up dying? That’s two of my brothers you’ve all failed. Two! In case you’ve forgotten how my other brother’s murder was covered up for so long. So go ahead, lock me up for the rest of my life. What do I care? This system is as corrupt as they come. I do not regret shooting Darrell Dickens and I never will.”

They gave him 25 years to life, out of sheer spite. 

*******

This time last year, things weren’t great, Frank remembered as he stood in front of 1PP waiting to give a statement. Danny hadn’t been doing great, but at least he’d been there. Things hadn’t been great, but they were miles better than they were now. Now two of his sons were dead and Jamie had thrown his life away for a few seconds of revenge.

He gave his statement without much heart. Cut him a break. But, of course, why would the press do that? He was cold, they said. Unfeeling. Could they blame him?

Yes, of course they could. And he’d had just about enough of this.

“What more do you want from me?” he finally said. The crowd in front of him fell silent, confused. 

“This city has now taken all three of my sons. You call me cold? Two of my babies are dead and another is rotting in Rikers for murder because the court system couldn’t convict a known criminal. What more could you possibly want? What more do I have to even give? My daughter? Is that what you want?”

He looked out over the uncompromising crowd. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said, at first to himself, then a little louder. “You know what? Find yourselves a new police commissioner. I’m done.”

He walked away to a chorus of “Wait!” but he ignored it. What more could they possibly ask of him? And, like he’d said, what more did he even have to give?

Maybe he became over protective of his grown daughter after that. Obsessively so. She put up with it. If only because she knew she was the only one left.

*******

Henry remembered the days when his family was whole. When Joe and Danny were still alive and Jamie wasn’t in prison. When Linda and the boys still knew how to smile, Nicki too.

He definitely felt a little bit bad for Erin, the remaining Reagan child, suffering her father’s overly watchful eye. (He did it out of love. Pure, heartbroken love of a father watching his family self destruct.)

And what is Jamie, dead? No, but for the next 25 years, he was as good as. Henry wouldn’t live to see him set free.

The dinner table was so empty as of late. Just him, Francis, Linda, Erin, and kids. Henry had taken to inviting Renzulli, Jackie, and Gormley, just to make things feel less empty. Renzulli and Jackie alternated weekends (he knew they both felt responsible for the Reagan family’s current situation and could hardly bear to accept their hospitality more than twice a month). Gormley had yet to accept the invitation. It was probably for the best, considering after 6 months of the “new normal” (i.e. going to church in the morning, the newly added stop of visiting Jamie in Riker’s, and then family dinner (minus so, so many...)), it was falling apart.

Frank preferred to spend as much time as he could with Jamie, often missing family dinner altogether.

Erin had taken to working Sundays (as a side note, Henry thought it a miracle she hadn’t been disbarred after numerous outbursts about corrupt courts), preferring to have anything else to do but confront the empty seats at the table. When she didn’t come, Nikki took the bus over, desperately trying to keep the family alive. There was only so much one girl could do.

The boys had stopped wanting to come, preferring to be on their own. Linda worried over them as obsessively as Francis did over Erin, though with more purchase. Jack had taken to getting in trouble, just generally acting out more and more.  (Henry prayed he wouldn’t end up next to his uncle in prison, God, what had Jamie been thinking, setting that kind of example for his nephews! Revenge, what good is that when he could have been acting as an uncle/mentor (he couldn’t bear to think surrogate father) to his nephews?!)

But Henry was just an old man, what did he know?

He sighed. Less than a year. It had taken less than a year for what remained of his family after Joe had died to fall apart.

He took a sip of his whiskey and pressed a hand over his failing heart.

In another universe, he wondered if this story had a different ending.

 

**_El Fin_ **

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A full year after I wrote the first words of this, it is finally finished. Thank you so much for reading and sticking with this after the long wait! Stay tuned for more in the chapter 1 universe.

**Author's Note:**

> Please proceed for an alternate ending (take a wild guess what happens). Please do not proceed if you feel such a story will be harmful to your health. More detailed warnings in following chapter


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